Cold Comfort
by Aeschylus Rex
Summary: Modern AU - Elsa is a murderer, and her new college roommate, Anna Sorenson, has a dirty little secret.
1. Chapter 1

_2.6.16_

 _Hello again! New day, new fic! Before you get all excited, no Elsa is not a serial killer (although that's a pretty intriguing idea, isn't it?). This fic was inspired more by the works of other fanfic authors than by the movie 'Frozen' itself. I'm referring specifically to WolfBrigade, author of "Kill of the Night" and Pmrising, author of "You Are". Both stories made me realize that these Disney characters, ostensibly created and marketed for the hearts of 8 year old girls, could be written very effectively as complex adults in tough, real life situations, and those fics, along with angsty memories of my own college experiences, compelled me to write this story._

 _This story is definitely AU, and I may have taken a few too many liberties with the characters. I only hope that you all enjoy reading this as much as I have enjoyed writing it._

 _Thanks, -_

 _-Rex_

* * *

 **Prologue**

Elsa's father calls her a cold hearted bitch before she kills him.

He snarls it at her as she aims down the barrel of his unregistered colt .45. Her slender hands are bare and shaking against the cold metal. Grey clouds swirl overhead, pale and hazy and threatening more snow, but she isn't really aware of the arctic chill. Her vision blurs and her nose runs, and she wipes the moisture away roughly on the back of her hand and stays focused. She has spent a lifetime averting her gaze. This time she keeps her eyes on his, the ones they share, the clear, striking blue. They don't look so alike as they once did. Elsa has her mother's nose, and a light dusting of freckles across her pale cheeks, but that is cold comfort now as her father glares at her from the snow, ice water seeping into his jeans, platinum hair wild in the icy wind. Right now, she only sees their similarities.

"Don't fucking move," she says, when he starts to get up, and pulls back the hammer.

He settles down again on the ground, but his expression is murderous. He wants to choke her. Elsa knows that if she lets him up again, he will. She wonders what he sees when he looks at her, now. She wonders if he even sees her at all, or if she's just another obstacle to hurdle on the way to his next fix. She wonders if he remembers the picture on their refrigerator from her fifth birthday, when she reached up to hold his hand in a pale blue dress, when it was just the two of them, and together they looked so alike that it was uncanny.

The way his bloodshot eyes flicker now, she already knows that he doesn't.

It sucks the air out of her lungs.

Her mother is sobbing on the porch behind her with a black eye and a bloody robe. Each wretched gasp rings out in the quiet yard like an alarm and Elsa curls her hands tighter around the gun. Her father's knuckles are bleeding in the snow, curled into fists, waiting for a chance to tip the balance of power. He will kill her, she realizes, if he can. If she lets him. But she won't let him. Elsa feels like she's peering into a mirror, and it's a mirror that she wants to shatter.

When he lunges at her, she grits her teeth and pulls the trigger.

* * *

 _A/N: Please leave a review!_


	2. Chapter 2

**1.**

Elsa's whole world changes in an instant.

The neighbors call the police. Her mom cries into her hands, can't even look at her. She's a murderer now and everything is different.

The paramedics take pictures of her bruises in the back of an ambulance. She takes off her shirt and lets them touch the tender places where his belt marked her. She's present, and she's not. People are talking to her and she's lucid, her mouth is moving, words are coming out, but she is floating above them all, looking down at the scene below like it's a movie and she's back on her couch, flipping through channels, watching apathetically as someone else's life falls apart.

"Almost done," the woman says, handling her body with blue latex gloves and tidy professionalism. "Can you turn around this way? More into the light? Yes, that's better. Just hold still for a moment, okay?"

Men and women pace in and out of the house, crisp and featureless in their blue suits. Red and blue lights strobe in the dark, illuminating the surrounding houses, distorting them, drawing them closer until it feels like they are crowding the narrow street. Some of the neighbors have come out to survey the spectacle. They stand behind a flimsy barrier of yellow police tape and talk amongst themselves, pointing, gesturing, speculating. It's an exciting bit of action in their burned-out, backwater factory town. Elsa's head throbs as she is loaded into the back of the squad car.

"Too tight?" the officer asks, tugging her seatbelt.

Elsa shakes her head. Maybe it is, but she can't tell. He takes her at her word anyway and closes the door, and then she's alone behind the cage, shaking.

It doesn't let up for hours.

/-/-/-/-/

The police go easy on her because she's so obviously a victim of domestic abuse. Just five months earlier, after another fractured wrist, her mother had finally pressed charges and gone to get a restraining order, because, as she so delicately put it, her husband "had a bit of a problem with drugs." The neighbor, Carol, gives a statement on their behalf, recounting the screams and curses that she heard for years from their house across the street to a room full of sympathetic investigators. It's a no brainer.

"It's a clear case of self-defense," the chief states plainly, and nobody disagrees.

Nobody locks up a scared teenage girl defending her battered mother from a meth-crazed ex-con. They assure her that the DA's office won't press charges. They recommend that Elsa see a counselor, but otherwise she gets off scot free. She won't even transfer schools.

"Take care of yourself, kid," the detective says to her, outside the station in the biting wind. "Don't get stuck here, okay? You're smart. Go to college."

Elsa shakes his hand and mumbles something polite, but her fingers are so numb that she can't really feel him. His eyes linger on her as she shuffles down the icy steps.

She drives her mother home in silence. The radio is off. They don't even turn on the heater as snowflakes melt against the windshield. The chill has seeped under Elsa's skin, down to her bones, and it feels good to be numb. Her muscles feel like they're made of ice. She knows that something big has shifted, something deep and tectonic. The tension that has kept her rigid for so long has finally snapped, and she should feel loose, but she doesn't. She just feels cold.

/-/-/-/-/

When they get home, she spends an hour sitting on the kitchen floor, staring at the broken plastic on the bottom of their Maytag dishwasher. Everything except the gun is exactly where they left it. The off-white Charlie Brown mug is shattered in the sink. Spilled coffee has dripped down and dried on the window pane. Her backpack is lying on its side in the doorway, and the wall clock is face down on the linoleum, broken. The police have come through and taken pictures of everything, labeled the evidence, and bagged the gun. Now they're gone, and all that's left are muddy footprints.

Eventually, she shuffles into the bathroom with the half-hearted intention of taking a shower, but stops cold when she sees herself in the mirror. For second she is standing in the yard again with the heavy gun quivering her in hands, glaring into red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes. Her heart slams against her ribs, rousing her senses from their numbed stupor with alarming speed. She reaches out to steady herself against the porcelain sink, sucking in a heavy, panicked breath, and then she blinks, once, and her own crystal blue blinks back at her, tired and dead.

Her heart, it seems, never gets the memo.

It keeps pounding away in her chest like she's running the final stretch of the Boston Marathon. Her pulse is so high that she slumps to the ground, with cotton in her head and static in her eyes, hot forehead pressed against the frigid tiles below the vanity. Bile rises suddenly in her throat and she fears that she'll be sick. She breathes rapidly, but there isn't enough oxygen in the air to keep pace with her straining lungs.

It's all gone to shit so fast, and the walls are closing in.

Elsa relents, lets her body crumple with a heavy thud onto the bathroom floor, and curls herself into a tight, shivering ball.

/-/-/-/-/

When the storm passes, she can't sleep.

She sits alone on the back porch and watches the snowflakes float down, heaven's frozen tears falling from the steel sky, layering to cover her yard in a blanket of the purest white. By now, the blood is gone. It has soaked into the ground and into the roots of the grass, but she can still see it.

She closes her eyes wearily and it's still there.

The blood.

/-/-/-/-/

Elsa skips the funeral and goes back to school as soon as possible because she can't stand to be cooped up in the house. Their two-bedroom craftsman has never felt so claustrophobic. On the fourth morning she changes her jeans, re-braids her hair, and pulls on a raggedy sweatshirt. Autumn has been so cold that it's snowed several times already and she wraps a blue scarf around her neck and tugs a fleece hat over her ears for good measure. She'll be fine like this without a real coat until the temperature plunges in December. Until then, the cold never really bothered her anyway. She slips into her boots and slides her backpack over her shoulder, and avoids the bathroom mirror as she passes in the hallway. Her mother is where's she been for nearly 12 hours, curled up on the living room sofa in her black dress, staring at the flickering TV screen. She doesn't move when Elsa approaches. There are dark circles under her eyes. A large, bruise is fading on her cheek.

"I'll be back this afternoon," Elsa rasps. "Call if you need anything."

Her mother's lips part, but no sound comes out, just a quiet, rattling breath.

"Okay." Elsa kisses her mother on the forehead and leaves for school on a tepid high note.

What she forgets is that people watch the news. It's all out there in the open now, her troubled life story. She might as well emblazon a scarlet letter on her Walmart hoodie. The crowd parts for her in the hallway. She feels their eyes on her as she exchanges books in her locker, and at first she thinks it's all in her head, but then her biology teacher and her math teacher both pull her aside after two successive classes to 'check in', and there can be no doubt. Everybody knows.

She ducks into the library at lunch and hyperventilates in the history section at the back. Her bag falls to the ground and she crumples down next to it, displacing the books on the shelves behind her. She doesn't cry, just digs her fingernails into her palms.

"Damnit," she mutters, and doesn't let up when it begins to sting.

It's awful being the center of attention. It's the worst. All she wants to do is stay out of the spotlight until she can gather up the pieces and put them back together, but now everyone is looking, and she can't disappear.

Her eyes slip closed, and the ledge is immediately there under her feet.

Her toes grip the edge. The void calls to her from below, but she won't jump. Not yet. She finds the only other force inside herself that's strong enough to fight it and grasps it, wraps it like boxing tape around her knuckles.

She chooses anger, because if it's not anger it's despair, and that's a no-brainer.

Anger it is.

/-/-/-/-/

"Work was alright, today," her mother says one evening, piling store-bought mashed potatoes on her plate.

By some miracle, a month has passed. Time has stopped moving at a glacial pace, and her mother is speaking to her again, albeit sporadically. Their lives don't feel so much like a slow motion car wreck anymore. The collision has already happened, the squeal of tires, the crash upon impact, and they are both stitched back up, wrapped in gauze and medical tape.

"That's good," Elsa says, but it's more than good. It's amazing. She remembers to smile a little bit, no longer alarmed by how unnatural it feels.

"How's school?"

Her mother watches her carefully, but Elsa keeps her eyes fixed on the microwaved green beans she is ladling onto her plate.

"Fine," she replies.

And it's only half true.

School is not fine, not exactly. Her classmates still part around her like she's Moses marching into the Red Sea. She still drains her reservoir of anger every day to stay grounded against the whispers and glances, still wrings out every drop until it hurts. When it gets particularly rough, she fantasizes that she can carve herself a set armor from the hardest ice, that she is in a class of her own. Frozen, beautiful, and undisturbed.

Reality is less dazzling.

The sympathy grades from concerned teachers are at least keeping her GPA afloat. Elsa knows it won't last forever, but she can't seem to get on track. Her thoughts are everywhere, scattered like loose marbles on a playground. She just can't focus. She watches her teachers vacantly as they write on their whiteboards, and her pen is so heavy when she tries to lift it. She can barely take notes. She can barely remember what they say. It's like she's greased up and their words just slide right off.

It's incredibly frustrating that the only thing sticking to her right now is an insult that was hurled at her by Derek Marshall, a hockey player in her history class. He wears camo like normal people wear denim, and doesn't seem to care that she ostensibly murdered her deadbeat father in cold blood. He's been vying for her attention for ages, and even that, apparently, isn't going to stop him. It's been a week since he'd told her he had a flat of Natty Ice and a dad that drove long haul trucks on the weekend, and wouldn't she like to "come to his house party, maybe unwind a little?" He had literally waggled his eyebrows at her.

Of course, the thought of alcohol, of losing any of the control she had so carefully cobbled together, sounded like a horrible idea. She had basically told him as much.

"How can you just turn me down like that, you frigid bitch?" he'd demanded, nostrils flared like an angry horse, twisted around in his seat to face her. "You ice queen? Do you know how much crap I'm gonna get for even asking your crazy ass out at all?"

Which was far as he got before the teacher interrupted him. If only it had ended there.

Derek was waiting for her in class the next day with a cup of ice in his hand. "For you," he'd said, his acid smile lopsided and cruel, "in case it gets too warm in here for the ice queen."

It had shocked all of the air out of the room, and all of the fight out of Elsa. By the end of the week she had gotten six more cups from various members of the hockey team, but Elsa is still surprised that juvenile comment from Derek Marshall has stuck.

Ice queen? Really?

"Everyone thinks you're on drugs," Jenny had explained to her later, one of her oldest, and most jaded school friends. "Meth, actually. You know, like ice?"

Jenny is tall and lanky and troubled, cynical to a fault with a fatal attraction to losers and cheap alcohol, but she's known Elsa since middle school, and she knows not to bring up the family situation. They try not to bring it up at all if they can help it. It's a sensitively situation all around.

"On drugs?" Elsa had scrunched her brow in confusion. "Or cooking drugs?"

Jenny had rolled her eyes, her obvious disdain telegraphed even more strongly by her heavy, black eyeliner. "Don't count on highschoolers to make that distinction, Elce."

"I guess it's kind of funny," Elsa had mumbled, "like in a dark humor way, since my father-"

"Yeah," Jenny had cut her off with a sharp, warning look, "I read the news."

"Sorry."

"I know you are," she'd replied, and changed the topic.

It's all she'll get. Jenny doesn't do condolences. She says it's because she's dead inside, but it's probably more closely related to the Hoover Dam she's constructed to keep her own emotions at bay. Some of Elsa's classmates do give her sympathetic looks, though, as though it helps, as though it's enough. She doesn't know what to do with their pity. It makes her angry. It makes her anxious. She almost prefers Jenny's aggressively enforced emotional isolationism. At least that helps her keep up her thick, frozen barriers, because as the school's resident 'ice queen', she isn't actually very icy at all. She's a tumultuous vessel of burning feelings, and she can hardly contain it. Everything is too small, every building, every hallway, every room full of curious faces. Her heart beats so fast sometimes she thinks it will explode out of her chest, but it doesn't.

She hasn't killed anyone again. She hasn't turned into a serial killer, yet. It's the thinnest silver lining she's ever seen, a more liberal definition of "fine" than she'd have normally been comfortable with.

"Just fine, Elsa?" Her mother's hard voice from across the table drags her back into the present.

"Yeah," she shrugs a bit, "fine."

"Right," her mom scoffs. "You know who else is fine? My opiate-addicted boss."

Elsa frowns. "What are you getting at?"

"I'm saying I don't believe you." Her mom chews some potatoes and reaches for her water. "After...what happened, can you honestly tell me you're fine?"

Elsa opens her mouth to protest, and closes it again. "...No."

"Okay." Her mother runs her fingers through her long, brown hair. "Do you wanna talk about it?"

"Not really," she admits.

"Are you talking to the therapist at school?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I'm not…" Elsa sighs and pushes her food around her plate. "I'm not ready to talk to him yet."

"When will you be ready?"

"I don't know."

"Do you want to talk to my therapist? Dr. Eifert? She's really good."

Elsa stabs a hapless greenbean with her fork. "I'll think about it."

In good faith, because she respects her mother, she does think about it a little, but when she lays in her bed that night and tries to figure out what she would say, the words float away from her like smoke, slipping between her fingers. Each time she tries to grasp them, her fist closes on air. The only thing she feels for sure right now is the perpetual itch of anger. The rest of it is nebulous. The problem is that it's too much. It's too enormous. Everything that's happened, her whole life, the world as she knew it, ended with a spiraling bit of lead that was loosed by her hand. She's certain that no therapist can possibly help her until she finds a way to describe the unintelligible rage that's hollowing her out from the center.

Elsa's fingers flutter against her bedspread in the dark. The room is frigid, and she keeps it that way more often lately, window cracked, letting the winter air flow inside. She watches a white cloud of breath rise from her lips and catch the moonlight. The goosebumps on her skin are painful, and the brush of her fingernails against her arms feel like needles. She's so tense that her muscles are ready to snap. There are permanent knots in her back, and she feels a roiling queasiness rise up yet again from her sour stomach.

It hits her all at once that she can't remember what it's like to feel something other than the suffocating weight of shame on her chest, so heavy that it's a struggle to breathe some days, to inhale and exhale, in that order, to keep heart rate from spiking into overdrive. This is the new normal, and it's awful. It's not what she imagined at all when she snatched his gun off the table, and aimed it between his eyes. The pull of that trigger was meant to free them both forever, but she knows better now. Nothing in the world is free, and violence comes with a price.

Elsa knows that she will pay that price until the day she dies, possibly after, possibly forever.

She closes her eyes and licks her lips, not surprised to find them already chapped and bitten.

/-/-/-/-/

* * *

 _A/N: Please let a review!_


	3. Chapter 3

**2.**

Anger is expensive.

All the best things are, Elsa realizes, as she glares into the shop window at a pair of boots that her mother certainly needs, and which neither of them can afford. Her hand is stuffed into the pocket of her coat, curled into a fist around a couple of twenty dollar bills she's earned from her new part time job bagging groceries. It's not nearly enough. The store window is bright and filled with tinsel, and the boots have high quality construction, heavy, oiled leather and thick rubber soles, a fashionable tan and navy blue scheme that's in-step with the current trends. They would make such a nice present. They would make her mother so happy. Elsa squeezes until the edges of the crisp, ATM bills cut into her palm.

They aren't starving by any means, but there's just never quite enough, and the funeral wasn't cheap. Even in death, her father took everything they had in the bank. It's his final parting shot.

Elsa grits her teeth as a family of shoppers floats past her on the slushy sidewalk, carrying bags from William Sonoma and the Apple Store. She watches them enviously. It feels voyeuristic, peering into their world of casual, American affluence. It makes the grass look so much browner on her side, even though, ethically, she knows it shouldn't. Elsa's mom has a decent job. She's been the breadwinner for years, pushing harder and harder through promotions and performance bonuses to keep up with her husband's loose spending habits, and Elsa's now joined her in the workforce to help with groceries. They'll be fine in the long run, when her mother gets the credit card debt under control. They won't be on the edge forever, but right now Elsa is breathing hard under her scarf, tears stinging her eyes, glaring into the shop window as she thinks about all the thousands of dollars pissed away on meth and booze and hookers.

"It's no use dwelling on it," a male voice says suddenly from behind her.

Startled, Elsa spins to look over her shoulder, but the speaker, an old man in a wool coat trench coat, is already pacing down the street in the other direction, engaged in private conversation with his wife. She swallows thickly.

She doesn't believe in signs. She's not superstitious, but it still feels like she should move on, like she needs to leave the store and let it go.

"Another time," she says to the window.

She turns and continues along the busy sidewalk past jovial holiday storefronts. Her throat is so tight it hurts. This isn't what she came for. She didn't bus into the city to get angry about the things she can't change. It's supposed to be about her mom, and she keeps making it about him.

Elsa rounds the corner breathing heavily. Cold wind cuts through her and she has to lean against a lamppost to recover herself. The fire has gone out, and all that's left is heavy exhaustion. She lifts her eyes to the grey winter sky, noting the encroaching indigo hue of twilight. She's spent too much of her energy already, and she's running out of time.

Elsa sighs and pushes away from the post, trudging off down the street. Anger is expensive, but without it she's catatonic.

She digs deep and finds a little more to speed her along.

/-/-/-/-/

"Merry Christmas, honey bunny."

Elsa blinks and looks up from the TV. "Merry Christmas," she says, automatically.

She hadn't even heard her mother come in the door, and the intrusion of human conversation into her headspace wakes her from a trance. It's something that happens more often now.

She glances around the dim room, notes that the sun has set by the glow of the neighbors' decorations outside the living room window. She realizes that she has no idea what time it is and checks her watch. The day has really slipped by with her curled up on the couch, and now, suddenly, her body feels awful, cramped and achy and sore. She groans and stretches her legs out in front of her, accidentally knocking an empty take out container off the coffee table. It lands on the carpet on its side, stained chopsticks splayed out lewdly. She considers it for a moment, and then decides to leave it.

"What're you watching? I Love Lucy?" Her mother hands her a plate that's still warm from the microwave and flops down next to her on the couch.

Elsa nods slowly. She pokes the hot pocket on her plate and hisses. It's still molten hot.

"Charlie Brown Christmas is on at seven if you wanna watch," her mom says after a moment, grabbing the comforter, which is now permanently draped over the couch, and wrapping it around her shoulders. "That one's always been my favorite."

"Sure," Elsa nods.

She reaches up to fix her hair and her fingers trip over soft fabric. How long has she been sitting here with her hood up over her head, huddled up in the dark in her pajamas and her old sweatshirt? The house is cold, but it's not that cold. The heating isn't that expensive.

"You okay, honey bun?" Her mother's concerned face swims into view. "You're awfully pale."

"How can you tell in the dark?" Elsa murmurs.

"I'm your mother. I can tell."

"Hm," she says. "Oh, yeah."

Their little Christmas tree sparkles in the corner of the room and Elsa stares at it, vacant and transfixed, like it's some relic of the ancient world covered in beautiful, indecipherable hieroglyphics. She used to care about Christmas, right? Even when things got tight and they had to eat cereal for dinner she remembers enjoying it. There are some good memories to pull from the murky depths.

The TV flickers, throwing bright flashes of white light against the walls, and she thinks, involuntarily, of the year that her father brought home a bike, wrapped in Disney Princess wrapping paper.

Never mind that he pawned it two years later for a bit of cash.

"I'm sorry that this isn't the best Christmas it could be," her mother says, brushing her short, honey brown hair out of her face. "Hot Pockets are probably the worst Christmas dinner ever. Maybe if I wasn't so lazy I would've actually managed to get a ham or something." She laughs, but to Elsa it sounds so self-deprecating it makes her hair stand on end.

"Don't," she says tersely.

Her mom's laugh falters and she looks at Elsa with surprise. "Don't what?"

"Don't say you're lazy." Elsa's eyes well up unexpectedly and she blinks down at her plate. "You're not lazy."

A teardrop splashes onto the rubbery, microwaved bread and rolls off onto the red porcelain plate. She's not even sure when her teeth started chattering. Suddenly, she's bursting with frustration, and it's leaking out the seams.

"It was just joke, sweetheart."

"It wasn't a joke," Elsa insists, through clenched teeth. "You meant it."

Her mother shifts nervously on the couch, eyes wide and uncertain, more concerned than before. "I didn't mean to upset you. I'm sorry."

"Stop apologizing," Elsa whispers hoarsely. "You're always apologizing. It's not your fault."

A cool hand settles on her arm and her breath hitches. She glances up with tears streaming down her face, coming faster, so thick that she can barely see.

"It isn't yours either," her mother says quietly.

She pulls Elsa into her arms as the storm rolls in and the first sob breaks.

/-/-/-/-/

Eventually it becomes apparent that she'll have to find some way to vent her anger.

Two months after her father's death, Elsa dreams that she's at school with his gun, foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog, hungry to kill. Terrified faces flee before her as the Colt .45 flashes and recoils, firing into the crowd.

She bolts upright in bed, drenched in sweat with the covers kicked off and her hair plastered to her face. Her chest heaves, but she can't get enough air. Her mind is as stormy as the weather outside. Bone-chilling winds howl through the cracks in her window, buffeting the house with such force that it groans and shifts on its foundation. She presses a hand to her forehead and feels the hair matted there, but it still takes her a couple minutes to remember where she's at, brought back, finally, by the familiar drone of the TV through her bedroom wall.

Exhausted, Elsa flops back against her mattress, biting into her fist. She curls herself into a ball under the covers, willing the bad thoughts to go away, but they don't. They come back. They linger. The nightmarish images morph and change. It's never the same setting twice, but she is always the wild-eyed executioner, always foaming at the mouth, always charging into the crowd.

She is forced to admit to herself, some time in the wee hours of the night, that the nightmares aren't as outlandish as she wants them to be.

/-/-/-/-/

She's falling asleep in math class the next day, glaring at the back of Derek Marshall's crew cut, when she comes to a realization.

The truth is she's not actually an ice queen.

She's actually a ticking time bomb, and she's like Pandora's box, all of the evil inside clamoring to escape while she tries, desperately, to keep the lid on. She's frozen on the surface, but she's molten at the center. She feels chaotic and destructive, and if she thinks about it too much maybe she'll foam at the mouth and attack someone like she does in her dreams, laughing maniacally as blood splatters across her face.

The thought makes her lightheaded. Her eyes fluttered closed, and the cliff is there again, below her feet. She looks so much like her father when she peers into the mirror every morning. Is she just delaying the inevitable? She knows what she's capable of now. How far does the apple really fall from the tree?

Her pencil snaps in her fist.

"Where are you going?" The teacher asks, turning from the whiteboard as she frantically gathers up her things mid-lecture.

"Nurse," she manages.

"Are you not feeling well?"

She trips over the legs of her own desk as she stumbles to the door and she can hear people whispering behind her.

"Nurse!" she gasps again, wrenching open the door, fleeing into the empty hallway.

She retreats to the library and quivers against the European history shelf, knuckles shoved between her teeth. The room is silent, but her head is so loud it's deafening. She bites down until it stings and blood runs into her sleeve.

All she can think of is the way her father looked in an orange jumpsuit, holding the phone to his ear behind a thick glass window on her tenth birthday.

/-/-/-/-/

"Have you been eating?"

Elsa shrugs, but she doesn't tear her eyes away from the TV. "Yeah."

"You have?"

"Yeah."

Her mother huffs and goes into the kitchen. Sounds carry into the living room, the pots banging around in the cabinet, water running from the faucet, the clang of the saucepan against the stove. When she returns, she folds her arms across her chest as severely as she can and gives Elsa a slow, once over.

"I'm making spaghetti with extra sausage tonight. You're losing weight."

"No, I'm not."

"Those jeans used to fit."

"They've stretched out."

Bright light flashes from a car commercial, illuminating her mother's face a ghastly white. Elsa shivers involuntarily and curls further into her baggy flannel.

"When did you start lying to me?" her mother asks quietly, so quietly that it's almost a whisper, a private thought uttered aloud.

Elsa doesn't answer. She gets up off the couch and goes to hide away in her room.

/-/-/-/-/

"She's right, though," Jenny says the next day. "You're getting too skinny."

"Isn't that supposed to be a good thing?" Elsa answers dryly, passing Jenny's Pepsi back across the lunch table. "Being thin?"

Jenny takes a sip and caps the bottle. "You don't look thin, you look sick."

Elsa frowns reflexively and glares around at the oblivious faces in the lunchroom. Some of them are smiling and laughing. Some of them are somber, serious, or glum. Her eyes fall to her hands, scrubbed raw to the point of bleeding. She doesn't even feel like she's the same species anymore.

"You didn't have the weight to lose in the first place," Jenny continues, each word grating like sandpaper against her pale skin. "It's not healthy."

"I'm just not hungry," Elsa murmurs.

Jenny gives her a stern look, laced underneath with a palpable fear that Elsa has never seen there before. The shields have fallen away just long enough for her to catch a glimpse. She hangs her head. Miserable tears prick at her dry, aching eyes.

"Stop punishing yourself, Elsa," Jenny pleads, and turns away. "You're scaring me."

/-/-/-/-/

Jenny makes it sound simple, but Elsa knows it's not simple. She can feel the pressure building, and if she doesn't do something soon it will build until she can't contain herself anymore. But she's not going to let herself hurt anyone else. She starts searching in earnest for an outlet.

The idea to cut isn't hers at all, though she has been unconsciously using pain for weeks to control her volatile emotions. The idea actually comes from a girl named Clare Hinkley, who dyed her hair black Sophomore year and puts safety pins through all her clothes.

Elsa waits and approaches her after class.

"You cut?"

Clare is jamming her Chemistry books into a black messenger bag covered with band patches, and her eyes light up like fireworks on the Fourth of July when they meet Elsa's.

"You noticed?" she breathes.

"I couldn't help it," Elsa says dryly. "You have bandages all over your arms."

"Right, yeah." Clare fidgets nervously.

"Do you use a knife?"

She gives Elsa a strange look. "Um, I dunno. I guess it depends. My cousin got me a really sharp hunting knife for Christmas last year and I like to use that. I don't have to apply much pressure."

"Do you sterilize the wounds?"

"Yes?"

"Do they scar?"

"Sometimes."

Elsa tilts her head to the side. "Does it hurt a lot?"

Clare zips up her bag and throws it forcefully over her shoulder. "Of course it fucking hurts. Is this some kind of sick joke?"

"No, I'm just curious. Thanks." Elsa flashes a polite smile and heads for the door.

"You're welcome?" Clare calls after her, bewildered.

That night, alone in her room, she unloads supplies from the pharmacy on her bed: bandages, neosporin, rubbing alcohol, scar cream, pocketknife. Surveying the spread, she doubts that Clare Hinkley puts this much detailed planning into it, imagines her listening to loud music in a dark room wearing even darker eye makeup. Clare is more the type.

Elsa glances down at her powder blue cardigan and snowflake leggings. She is so not the type. Girls like her are supposed to drink clear liquors and get loose with boys.

Then again, girls like her don't murder their fathers. She's already more of a freak than Clare Hinkley will ever be.

Elsa flips the pocketknife open in her hands and studies the tiny serrations near the handle, following the blade as it curves into a straight edge. It's a relief that her mother has been working late, that Jenny can't do emotional intimacy, that her classmates avoid her. It's easier to control her emotions when she's alone, because even the kindest people are clumsy, and sometimes even the best of intentions can hit the wrong trigger, flip the wrong switch. It's better if they're wary of her.

A bitter smile breaks across her face. It's funny because she's beautiful. In another life she could have run for prom queen. In this one, she dodges glances and skips class to hide in the back of the library.

She tries to imagine herself in the spotlight, wearing a dress and a tiara, but she can't picture it.

It wouldn't suit her.

/-/-/-/-/


	4. Chapter 4

3.

It helps, but the effects are temporary. She finds that she comes back to it more than she'd like.

Of course, Elsa's not stupid. She can draw plenty of comparisons to her late father's dependence on methamphetamine. There's a hidden box of paraphernalia in her closet, and she wears long pants to cover the marks. And then there's the general furtiveness, the pervasive unease that keeps her nerves wound like a steel trap, ready to spring with bone-crushing force at the lightest tap of curiosity. She has always had secrets, but she has never kept one so close to her chest, clutched tight with jealousy and shame and the acute fear of discovery. As a habit, it is justifiable only because she can draw a stark line in the sand between herself and a drug addict. For one thing, she isn't going to bankrupt herself or anybody else doing it, and the tiny euphoria she might feel as natural opiates rush to numb the sting is only just enough to relax her. There's no hangover or comedown to speak of, besides, maybe, a little drowsiness. It's safe, and most importantly, it doesn't harm anyone. For the first time in months, Elsa feels like she has a little control.

With that control comes a flow of tepid warmth, the trickle of a spring thaw, a spark of interest in the things she once cared for. The fog of anhedonia begins to recede so effortlessly that she wonders how she could never manage to shake its iron grip before, and suddenly she is distinctly bothered by the state of the house.

She cleans for an entire weekend.

"Thank you, honey." Her weary mother kisses her on the temple as she returns from an overtime shift, slouched against the doorframe in a fisherman's turtleneck that once belonged to Elsa's grandfather. "The kitchen looks amazing. I don't think I've ever seen the sink sparkle."

Elsa smiles. It's a little nervous, and more than a little twitchy, but she means it. It's not forced.

"You should see the bathroom," she teases lightly, and that earns her a delighted grin.

"I can't wait." Her mom ruffles her hair affectionately and takes a deep breath, looking for all the world like she has never felt so relieved. "I am going to take such a long bath."

They order pizza and drink earl grey tea in front of the TV wearing bathrobes and slippers.

Elsa's paraphernalia stays tucked away for a few days.

It's not all roses, though.

On Monday of the following week, Elsa's locker door is slammed right under her nose, and suddenly Jenny is in her face, glaring at her. She squeaks, and backs up instinctively only to be pulled back in by the collar of her jacket.

"Where the hell have you been?" Jenny barks. "I haven't seen you in ages."

"I had a lot of homework to catch up on," Elsa says, weakly, extracting her jacket from Jenny's fingers.

"You couldn't answer your phone?"

"I'm- I'm sorry!"

"Seriously? God, fuck!"

Jenny slams her fist against the locker and growls, and that's when Elsa notices the black eye, a rash of mottled purple beneath a layer of heavy concealer. Jenny's pink-streaked hair, normally tousled and wild, is limp. Her nose ring is missing, and the area is red, as though it's been ripped out. Elsa feels the blood drain from her face.

"Oh my god, Jen-"

"Don't Jen me, Elce! Where the fuck have you been?"

"What happened?"

Jenny's pretty face contorts into an ugly sneer, lips curled to reveal sharp teeth, eyes narrowed into slits. Elsa takes an involuntary step back.

" Gary happened."

Elsa cringes. Gary is Jenny's stepfather, a factory floor manager who believes in Jesus Christ, Bass Pro Shop, and Yuengling Lager. Also strict, heavy-handed discipline. He's been known, on occasion, to let his fists do the talking when he's especially displeased.

Elsa leans in to examine the bruise, and Jenny tries to lean away, but she's trapped by the locker behind her. She relents, wincing as she allows Elsa's fingers to probe the area.

"Did the Steelers lose?" Elsa asks, pausing over a nasty reddish mark that may have originated from the impact of a ring. "I didn't see the game. I was cleaning."

Jenny hisses through her teeth. "No, they won." She brushes Elsa's fussing fingers away. "He was just mad 'cause Penn State sent me a rejection letter."

Elsa frowns. "I thought you didn't want to go there."

"I don't. That's not the point."

"So, what is the point?"

Jenny hunches her shoulders. They are broad, unlike Elsa's, and sharp through her tight, black, hoodie. She taps the heels of her boots together and squirms for a minute as she searches for the right words. It's not like her to be inarticulate, or at the very least, sharp-tongued. When she looks up again, her flecked brown eyes are pained.

"The point is I'm too stupid to get into the state college. At least, that's what fucking Gary says."

"You're not stupid," Elsa replies, automatically.

"My grades are bad."

"Maybe your grades are bad, but you're not stupid." Elsa crosses her arms defiantly. "You singlehandedly got me through math last year."

Jenny's answering smile is thin. "It's my only good subject."

"Go to community college for a year." Elsa smoothes the front of her jacket. "Get your grades up and then go where you want. Who cares what Gary says."

Jenny shrugs and kicks the linoleum, glancing up down the hall at a pair of band kids hauling their trombones into the music room. "Yeah, okay."

"You're not stupid," Elsa insists, one last time, with steel. "Don't let him get in your head. He wears camo overalls, for godsakes."

Jenny laughs and lightly punches her shoulder. "Yeah, yeah, okay. Look at you with all the good life ideas." She snorts and looks away. "What about you? Where are you going to college?"

Elsa blinks, suddenly derailed. "Um."

"Don't tell me you haven't thought about it."

"I…" Elsa fidgets with her braid. "I haven't thought about it. I mean, I can't really afford it."

"So, go to community college." Jenny smirks. "Get government aid or something, but don't stay here, Elce. You're not stupid."

Suddenly, the parting words of the detective at the police station come roaring back to her and Elsa shivers, wrapping her arms tight around herself. The double doors at the far end of the hallway swing open as the marching band files toward the buses, and a harsh chill rushes over her. People are laughing and talking, but she is miles away listening to sirens and paramedics, the murmured conjecturing of curious neighbors and the buzz of police radios.

"Hey," Jenny waves a hand under her nose, "is everything okay?"

"Yeah," Elsa mumbles. She reaches down to pick up her bag. "Just a bit of déjà vu."

/-/-/-/-/

Olaf is the first teacher who really sees her.

She transfers into his class second semester due to a scheduling conflict, and he calls her first paper on The Scarlet Letter genius. People have called her a lot of things in her life, but never 'genius', so she's more than a little gobsmacked when he commends her commentary on Hawthorne's ubiquitous use of moral allegory, and gives her an A++ for the section, if such a grade is even possible.

"Anything is possible," he tells her warmly, smiling behind his desk after class. "After all, grading scales are relative measurements, aren't they? I'll just have to adjust my curve. You've set a higher bar, my dear."

Her pale cheeks burn bright red. She fights the urge to run away and hide in the back of the library.

"I really liked the book," she murmurs, by way of explanation.

"I can see why you would," he says easily. "Hester Prynne is a very sympathetic character for people who have experienced ostracization from a group."

He says this like he knows something, like he's fired an arrow and already knows exactly where it will land. Elsa meets his eyes warily, but he just grins at her. It's so bright that she has to turn away from him, blinking furiously, as though she hasn't seen the sun months.

/-/-/-/-/

They become friends.

He's a teacher, and he wears too many garish sweater vests, but English is her favorite subject, and they spend so much time discussing the material outside class that her classmates think they're fucking (gag). Even Jenny makes a few caustic comments at her expense. Olaf is young and tall and wiry, and he wears horn rimmed glasses unironically with his brown corduroy pants and grey turtlenecks. She isn't sure how he manages to buy new clothes that look old, but it's a talent that he has a corner market on. His curly brown hair is perpetually in need of a trim, and his chin is just a little too sharp to be handsome. Still, there is a boyish charm about him, a twinkle in his eye. When he talks about literature he practically glows. He paces back and forth across the classroom waving his dry-erase marker in the air like a sword, and challenges students at random to answer one of his notoriously ambitious, open-ended questions. For most of her classmates, who are used to multiple choice tests with a selection of finite, right and wrong answers, this is daunting, for Elsa, it's invigorating. She takes to his Socratic teaching style like a fish takes to water, and he begins to call on her more and more as her answers grow sharper and more astute. It's like pouring gasoline on the fire where the school's rumor mill is concerned, but she doesn't care. When Olaf begins jokingly referring to her as 'Elsie', she tolerates it. Only her grandmother has ever called her that, but she makes an exception for him. American Lit has become a bright spot at the end of her day.

Meanwhile, despite her renewed interest in her classes, college remains a looming unknown on the horizon. At home, in her room, she pins a 'Scenic Pennsylvania!' calendar on the wall behind her bed and marks it with red x's, counting down the days until graduation, when she'll have to figure out what to do next. She doesn't have any plans yet, although, anything seems better than what she's got going now, and she's perusing community college catalogues in the library after school one day when Olaf finds her, or rather, nearly runs her over with a cart of books.

"Elsie!" he exclaims brightly, his usual turtleneck accented today with a bright red scarf. "I didn't see you there!"

"Hi, Mr. Roseman," she says blithely, rubbing her ankle.

"Just Olaf, please. School's already out."

He winks at her, and it's with mild exasperation that Elsa thinks it's no wonder there are rumors flying around.

"Do you have a second?" he asks, readjusting his crooked glasses. "I want to show you something."

'Something' turns out to be a stack of college applications piled on top of the desk in his office. Elsa takes one look at it and balks. She waves her hands in front of her face as she backs away slowly.

"I don't know, Olaf. That looks-"

"Fabulous?" he asks, grinning dizzily. "I know it's a little intimidating, but don't worry! I'm going to help you fill them out!"

"But-"

"No buts!" he declares, with apparently unsinkable enthusiasm. "I said I'm going to help you, and I will!"

And he does. He talks her through every packet.

At the end of the month she's already sent out applications to a couple schools and completed her FAFSA. Olaf proves to be a savvy college advisor. He's familiar enough with the financial aid regulations to get her application fees waived, and assures her that, so long as she receives the right grants, she'll be able to afford tuition for any school she wants.

Elsa's feelings on the subject, however, are varied and ambivalent. She doesn't feel she deserves to go to a real school. For everything she's done, it feels an awful lot like cheating karma.

Olaf, as usual, is relentless.

They're sitting in his office one afternoon while the library undergoes repairs. The sky outside is clear and blue, and the sunlight is shining through the slats in the crooked, metal blinds, making yellow stripes on his narrow face. Elsa drums her fingers against the desk, trying to concentrate on a brochure he's snagged for her from the student resources center, but her backpack is open at her feet with the uniform for her part time job spilling out, and she's mentally adding up the costs for her cap and gown, growing more distressed by the second. They're going to have to cut their grocery costs for the month, or make a credit card payment late. Her mother has taken all the overtime she can handle, and she'll be sick if she does any more. There's a chance that Elsa's manager at the grocery store will give her an extra shift, but it's not likely.

She heaves a frustrated sigh and pushes the packet away suddenly. "I don't know if I can do this."

Olaf looks up from a paper he's grading. "Do what?"

"This!" She gestures at the glossy, beautifully edited photo of Columbia University's New York City campus. "How can I possible afford something like this? This…" she trails off, frustrated, searching for the words. "This isn't me, Olaf. I'm not the kind of person who gets to have these things."

"You're saying you don't deserve it?" He leans back in his chair, looking pensive behind his thick frames. "What kind of person does deserve it, then?"

"I dunno," she shrugs, petulantly. "Rich kids."

"You think everyone who goes to Columbia is rich?"

"Either rich or stupid." She pushes her fingers through her hair, finding her braid already mussed and messy. "Who can afford to live in New York except rich people? Even if I get scholarships, like you say, I won't be able to survive there."

"What you deserve, and what you can afford are two entirely different things, Elsie." Olaf drops his pen and leans over the desk. "I know your secret," he says, growing suddenly very serious. "You're wicked smart, and your grades are very good. You make it sound like you don't try, but I know that you do, in fact, try very hard."

She blushes and mumbles something, eyes darting away. Her mother looks at her grades sometimes, but nobody else knows. Her classmates think she's on drugs. Her father...

"You do deserve to go to Columbia," he says, "if you want to. Nevermind what you can afford."

Unable to think of a suitable answer, Elsa stares steadily at her knees, willing herself not to cry.

"What do you want to study?" he asks gently. "Do you want to study literature? You can do that, you know. I picked out several schools with top English programs. With your grades and your socioeconomic standing, you'll have no trouble getting into any of them."

Elsa bites her lip. "I do like English."

Olaf hands her a different packet. "Look at this one, then."

/-/-/-/-/

He is, as it turns out, correct. She receives a torrent of acceptance letters early that spring, when the snow hasn't even begun melt, and suddenly the fog on the horizon lifts. She is confused, but she is hopeful for the first time in her entire life that she can choose where she goes next. It feels like a balloon is expanding in her chest. She feels positively buoyant. She lets the cuts on her thighs scab over and heal, and instead spends weeks pouring over the acceptance offers in her room, crunching numbers, researching campus life on her mom's computer. She's too poor to make site visits, but she does the best she can.

By early April she has made her decision.

"I hate you," Jenny bites out, shuffling along beside her on the slushy sidewalk toward the McDonald's across from school.

Elsa gives her an embarrassed, helpless look, and Jenny's expression softens.

"I'm also fucking proud of you."

Elsa kicks a slushball into the road and watches it fall apart. "I'm not outta here yet."

"You might as well be," Jenny says wistfully. "Once you leave, you aren't coming back."

Elsa sighs and shoves her hands into her coat pockets.

"Um, that's a good thing, Elce."

"You deserve it more than me."

Jenny rolls her eyes, the motion made even more dramatic by her thick eyeliner, and hooks her arm through Elsa's. She pulls the listless blonde close, closer than either of them are usually comfortable being, and keeps her there.

"Listen to me," Jenny licks her lips as she considers her next words, "stop trying to figure out what you do or don't deserve. Life isn't about what you deserve, I mean, hell, if you think what Jesus says in the Bible is true, then none of us deserve any of this. We're all basically shitheads."

"Jen-"

"No, shut up, Larsen, I'm not fucking finished. What I'm saying is that everybody is shitty, and everybody does shitty things. Maybe you've done some stuff? Well, so have I. Which one of us had a pregnancy scare last year, huh?"

Elsa shakes her head, mortified, but Jenny just laughs and tugs her along more forcefully than before.

"Stop thinking about what you're owed." Jenny glances at her sidelong. "The world doesn't owe you anything. It doesn't matter what you do. So, just take your opportunities and make the most of them, okay? Just do it for me at least, god."

"Okay, okay," Elsa replies, weakly. "I will. I'm sorry."

Jenny rolls her eyes and releases her. "Don't apologize. Just-" she waves a ring-laden hand, "go out there and live it up for me, 'kay? Because I'm gonna be stuck in this shithole another year."

"Alright, fine, okay?" Elsa smirks. "Since you're so insistent."

"I fucking am. And anyway, I wouldn't worry about your little guilt complex." Jenny gives her a dark look. "Karma is a bitch. You'll pay for your crimes one way or another."

/-/-/-/-/

Arendelle University, in upstate New York, is prestigious, mid-sized, and private. The campus is old and beautiful. The reviews are good. Even the alumni association seems strong. True to Olaf's word, the English program is indeed very rigorous. They've offered her a generous aid package, and together with her federal grants she'll owe just a couple grand every year, which she can easily cover with loans. Additionally, she'll have the opportunity to study abroad in Rome her sophomore year if she wants to, and she'll be close enough to her mother to take the bus home for holidays.

Elsa stares restlessly at the Arendelle poster on her bedroom wall. It's a shot of the campus from the air, a pallet of autumn colors and crimson brick, gorgeous enough to be a painting. It's worlds apart from her burned out industrial town. She wants to leap off her bed headfirst into the picture.

"God, I wish it was fall," she says to herself.

School's out for the summer, and Jenny's mother has dragged her out to Indiana with her brothers to visit family for a couple months. She has been blowing up Elsa's phone with exasperated text messages about her redneck cousins and the sheer ugliness of the city of Gary, where her grandparents apparently live. Honestly, Elsa isn't fairing much better. The long, lonely summer has left her feeling completely stifled. The air is hot and humid, even at night, and the mosquitos swarm as soon as the sun goes down. It feels like she's spent every night since May awake, tossing and turning in her twin-sized bed. To fill the time, she's been bagging groceries 32 hours a week at the Giant Eagle Supermarket, and Elsa thinks bitterly that she could have found something fun to do with the extra pocket money if only she'd had a boyfriend or a non-captive Jenny to get into trouble with. As it is, she is alone with library books, Netflix, and cable access TV to keep her entertained. Even her mother is working extra hours.

More and more often, the box of paraphernalia sits opened and strewn about on her bed as she watches through the seemingly endless seasons of Law and Order .

She finds that it's the only show she can stand, for some reason.

On the last Saturday of August she goes to meet Olaf at a cafe in town. School is going to start soon and he's back early from his fishing cabin on Lake Eerie to get his classroom straightened up. He's wearing a sweater vest with his shorts, despite the heat, and a Steelers ball cap that looks old enough to be a family heirloom. He gives her a hug before she sits down, and Elsa has to bite the inside of her cheek.

"This was a good year, wasn't it?" he asks cheerfully, as they wait for their sandwiches to arrive.

She nods slowly and Olaf gives her a knowing look.

"Maybe it would be more accurate to say that it started off rocky, and got better as it went along."

Her agreement to this statement is more genuinely heartfelt.

"I've never had a more promising student," he confesses, smiling gently, "but, Elsie, it's not just about your promise. It's about you. Make sure that you find your happiness, okay?"

She nods tearfully into her soda because she can't promise out loud.

Her throat is tight for hours after they part ways, as she's filling up her suitcase, and taping up her boxes. There isn't much to pack. Afterwards she sits on her bed and stares at the little pile by her door, lost in thought.

/-/-/-/-/

By some miracle her mom gets the day off work so she can drive Elsa the three hours northeast and help her move into her dorm room. A hurricane has skirted north past the Atlantic coast and it's raining buckets. The roads are clogged and the creeks are overflowing. What should take three hours on a clear day takes them five. Elsa doesn't really mind. She hasn't spent this much time with her mother uninterrupted for almost a year, and that probably should make her sad, but it doesn't. Rain drops splash on the windshield, and the rhythmic swish of the wipers back and forth lulls her into a relaxed, contemplative state of mind. They pass the time with little conversation.

Her mother has a beautiful voice that Elsa hasn't heard in awhile. She sings along to her favorite Steely Dan CD, the one Elsa's father always claimed to hate. She switches over to Paul Simon when that's through. Elsa only knows some of the words. She chimes in when she can, but she doesn't have her mother's voice.

"Daniel couldn't sing either," her mom's nose wrinkles, "your father."

As if Elsa could confuse him for someone else. He was always quick to hold that title over them. She doesn't let the flush of anger take her this time, though, because her mother has said something about him aloud without falling apart, and that's progress. It's baby steps, but it's progress. They'll deal with the rest of the wreckage as it comes.

So she says, "I wish I could sing like you," instead, and that makes her mom smile.

What she really means is 'I wish I was more like you', and they both know it.

"You got my nose," her mom replies, eyes flickering sadly. "And my smarts."

Elsa nods, and they go back to singing along to Graceland.

Sometimes she dwells on her mother's life, what could have been, what almost was. If only she hadn't married Daniel, she might've finished nursing school. She might've married a good man, one who treated her right, and didn't turn her best years into a living nightmare. Her mom always tells her that Elsa is her treasure, but Elsa just feels like a bad reminder of all the damage that can't be undone. Maybe it's because she is so much like her father that her mother can't quite hold her gaze anymore.

"Oh, I love this one!" her mom says, reaching for the dial.

Elsa just hums her agreement, and passes the rest of the car ride in silence.

/-/-/-/-/

Arendelle College is beautiful, even in the rain. All of the central campus buildings and most of the old dorms are brick. The architecture is classically Greek and timeless, a gorgeous composite of antiquity and 19th century contemporary. A soaring clock tower stands watch over the fountain in the main square, its peaked, copper roof a gloomy green under the rain clouds. The whole property is lush with elegant oaks, and firs, and bespeckled with landmarks that speak to the university's storied past, bronze monuments of nobel laureates, rich alumni donors, honored professors, and academic greats. Placards fitted into buildings, sidewalks, and benches honor names that Elsa has never heard, but she regards them with due reverence all the same.

Together, she and her mother make their way across campus. They follow wet, pink signs with bleeding ink to the student resources center and stand in line with the other new arrivals, nervous parents fretting over excited teens, eyes wide and anxious as they take in the new scenery around them. The fluttering in Elsa's stomach grows worse as she approaches the front of the line, and finally she's standing in front of a check-in table, stating her name for strangers with clipboards and boxes of envelopes. They take her picture and hand her a plastic ID card. A boy with acne scars and curly brown hair fumbles with his clipboard as she approaches and nervously hands her a packet with a mail key and directions to her room in Bramberg Hall.

"C-c-come to the student resources center if you need h-help with anything," he stammers, hopefully.

Elsa smiles as she thanks him.

She's still smiling faintly when they depart and step back out into the rain. She suddenly feels a bit giddy, a slight skip in her step as she helps her mother unload the car. She isn't particularly bothered that her hair is wet and her sweatshirt soaked through. When she ascends to the fifth floor for the first time and finds her room it feels like walking into a mansion. It's like a breath of fresh air after a thousand years locked in a musty basement. She will finally have something all her own, something that she has earned for herself. She has never had so much freedom at her fingertips, and it's almost overwhelming.

She sits on the bare, plastic mattress with her mom and stares around at the industrial carpet, the double sliding closet doors, the matching wooden desks, the vanity with the scratched up mirror in the far corner by the window, the adjacent door to the narrow bathroom and cramped shower. Most of all, she stares at the empty bed on the other side of the room. Her roommate isn't here yet. Elsa hasn't even looked at her name. She doesn't care. She's too high on her own freedom so worry about someone else's.

"This reminds me of my own college days." Her mother sighs softly. "This really takes me back."

"Will you go back to nursing school?" Elsa asks innocently, but it's not innocent at all, it's a loaded question.

It's the sum of everything between them right now.

"I don't think so," her mom replies after a beat. "It's a little too late for that, don't you think?"

"No," Elsa mumbles, "I don't."

The silence from her mother is deafening. It says more than a thousand words could about where they are, about where her father is.

"Let's get the rest of the car unpacked," her mom says at length, standing from the bed. "I've got a long drive ahead of me."

"You don't have to go back tonight," Elsa reminds her. "You don't work tomorrow, right?" She extends her hand toward the empty bed on the other side of the room. "You could sleep here."

She watches her mother's face and tries to read an answer in her flickering lashes, her muscle tics, the tightening of her jaw. She thinks she knows exactly what her mom is going to say, but she has no idea why she's going to say it. Elsa feels a pang of regret in her chest.

"I can't, sweetie," she says, and has the decency to look genuinely guilty about it. "I need to get back."

"But why?" Elsa asks.

Her blue eyes are bright and searching. She's pushing like a needy child and she never does that. Somehow, it doesn't catch her mother by surprise. Nothing she does catches her mother by surprise.

She studies her mom's hazel eyes for a sign, for an explanation, for...

"It makes me too sad," her mom draws a shuddering breath, surprising them both with her honesty, "being here. I-I just...I can't-"

"Okay," Elsa assures her quickly. "It's okay."

"No, it's-"

"Let's finish unloading the car." Elsa gives her a firm look. "I don't want you driving after dark."

"It'll be dark no matter what." Her mom glances helplessly around the room. "Should we at least get dinner before I go?" she asks, like Elsa is supposed to know the answer.

Elsa doesn't know the answer.

"Sure," she says, tentatively. "Where do you want to eat?"

"I don't know. What do you feel like?"

Truthfully, Elsa hasn't been hungry for anything all summer, but she searches through her memory anyway for something she used to enjoy, and tells her mother with confidence that pizza sounds good. They finish unloading the car and go out to dinner, but it feels forced.

Elsa wishes that she had just let her mother go.

/-/-/-/-/


	5. Chapter 5

**4.**

She has a few days to herself to get used to campus life, and she spends most of that time hidden away in the impressive, three story library off the center square. The Albert J. Inhoff Library, as it is formally called, smells overwhelmingly of books, both new and old. A pungent, musky odor percolates in the air, laden with sweet traces of wood polish, and sometimes, the faintest sour notes of musty decay. She knows within seconds of her first visit that the common study area is the most beautiful space she has ever seen, a long stone chamber, at least twice as tall as it is high, designed to resemble the nave of a great, gothic cathedral. Narrow stained glass windows, encased in ornate frames of grey stone, stretch up toward the arched, barrel-vaulted ceiling. Dozens of pentagonal, brass chandeliers, constructed in a classically Byzantine style hang from chains in two neat rows above the room, and the rays of sunlight that shine in from the eastern windows illuminate a field of golden dust, wafting, floating, and swirling over rows of old wooden desks. On the first day, she does little else except sit in the study hall and stare at her surroundings. By the end of her second visit she has begun to memorize the fluid curve of stone in the arched windows, and the swirling patterns carved into the wooden bookshelves that line the walls.

The library is quiet for the most part those first few days. She shares the building with just a few other souls, grad students and TAs, she guesses, silent and waif-like hunched over their books. The quiet rustle of turning pages punctures the thick silence every few minutes, and Elsa feels like she has finally found her church. No space, blessed or otherwise, has ever felt so holy to her. She prays between the stacks, letting her fingers brush the spines of encyclopedias and academic journals, novels, plays, and philosophical treatises, historical texts that promise to illuminate humanity's turbulent past. The silence isn't oppressive here. It wraps itself around her like a cloak on a cold winter's day, soft insulation against the needles of uncertainty that seem to prod her everywhere else. The solace is unexpected. It is needed.

Elsa will never admit to Jenny or Olaf, or even her mother, that she is scared. She won't tell them that her future looks like a cliff, a sheer drop shrouded in black mist, and that she wonders, every night before she falls asleep, when all of this will come crashing down around her. She wants to believe Olaf when he says that she deserves this, but her heart still constricts when she catches her reflection in the mirror, and she can't quite bring herself to throw away her little box of horrors. College is an opportunity that she never thought she would have, and now that she's here, she is terrified that she will lose it.

But she doesn't think about that in the library. She finds a well-worn collection of Flannery O'Connor's short stories and hides away in a dark corner at one of the long desks.

She reads until her eyes begin to burn.

/-/-/-/-/

After four days alone in her dorm, Elsa has lulled herself into a false sense of peace and security. She hasn't wondered much who will share the space with her for the semester. She's been so lost in her head and in her books that she's forgotten, even, to feed herself regularly. The empty bed on the other side of the room has already begun to feel like a permanent fixture.

This all changes abruptly on the morning of day five, the last day of move-ins.

Her new roommate is a human hurricane named Anna Sorensen. Anna is a disaster, figuratively and literally. She is everything that Elsa is not, warm, vibrant, open, affectionate, loud, clumsy messy, forgetful.

She is rich.

Or, well, her parents are. That much is obvious. They roll up to campus in a green Land Rover and burst into the room unannounced, breaking away from some animated argument that everyone seems to be embroiled in just long enough to introduce themselves.

"Oh, hello!" Mrs. Sorensen exclaims brightly, knocking her trendy, horn-rimmed glasses askew against the box she's carrying. "You must be Elsa!"

Elsa confirms this, warily, and the whole family sounds off like a military unit of rambunctious golden retrievers: Mark, Kathy, Anna, Madison, Ben, and Lea. They're all dressed like eccentric Brooklyn hipsters, wearing clothes that Elsa has only seen in iPhone commercials and band magazines. There's four siblings all together, and Anna is the oldest daughter, a slight, freckled thing with wide azure eyes and a mane of the most vibrant strawberry colored hair Elsa has ever seen. She is laughing with delight as she seizes Elsa's hand and gives it a vigorous shake.

"Howdy, new roommate! Gosh, you're absolutely gorgeous! They didn't tell me that I was going to have such a gorgeous roommate!"

Elsa retracts her hand quickly as if burned, but Anna doesn't even notice because she's already directing her brother and her father to dump a box of clothes on her bed.

"Just throw it there!" she calls. "I'll get to it later!"

They bury Elsa's neatly organized room in a mountain of stuff, and leave for dinner somewhere in town. She's cordially invited along by Mrs. Sorenson, almost as an afterthought in the midst of all the chaos (it turns out that there's also a young cousin with them who has gone missing), but she politely declines, citing a preexisting (and imaginary) appointment. She leaves and has a quiet dinner in the dorm cafeteria over a book. On the way back she takes a detour through the campus and mentally maps out a route to her classes in the morning.

When she returns, Anna is crashed out on her bed, fast asleep on a pile of clothes, surrounded by stacks of cardboard boxes like some kind of junkyard princess slumbering in her castle of trash. Elsa snorts in spite of herself, irate at the mess, amused at her disaster of a roommate. She's torn between amusement and annoyance. Anna sleeps like the dead, mouth ajar, hair wild. She looks like a tragically ridiculous work of art.

Elsa sits on her bed and observes. Her thoughts race around her head like dogs on a track. Her emotions ebb and flow like waves on the sand. She stays up half the night watching Anna Sorensen snore, legs crossed, back pressed against the wall, fingering her long blonde braid until it's frayed beyond repair. Her stomach begins to church sometime after midnight, and she knows it's only first-day nerves, but it still takes all of her concentration to calm down. She closes her eyes and lets her head tip back, breathing slowly in and out. Her body grows light as the minutes pass. She forgets about the piles of boxes and girl across the room. She sinks into the quiet and drifts off.

/-/-/-/-/

The next morning, she wakes up curled on the end of her bed like a cat. The sun is shining brightly through the blinds that she forgot to close, and something is pushing her shoulder gently, insistently.

"Elsa? Hey, Elsa wake up!"

Elsa blinks, and for a second she can't see anything at all, but then her vision clears and there are two blue orbs peering back at her. A wave of panic slams into her chest, squeezing the air from her lungs. Memories of blue eyes rush to the surface. Her body flinches away instinctively. It remembers what happens next.

"No-" she gasps and scrambles away, a groggy, uncoordinated mess. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"

She tucks her head under her arms, because maybe if she's lucky she won't have to explain the bruises to her teachers again. She waits and she cowers, shivering lightly, but the strike never comes. Instead, the room is filled with high, tinkling laughter, like a ringing bell. Elsa freezes, and her eyes flick open.

"Wow! I'm sorry! I didn't realize you hated mornings that much!" the voice says, and now Elsa is really confused.

She sits up, tentatively, and flinches when she sees the redhead across from her, standing over her bed in a green sundress and cowboy boots. Her hair is neat and double-braided, still damp at the ends, and she's fixed her makeup. The sun shining in from the window behind her has created a halo of gold around her head. Elsa is momentarily transfixed.

"Anna?" she murmurs.

"That's my name! Don't wear it out!" Her roommate grins from ear to ear, freckles stretching across her cheeks. "It's still early, do you wanna get breakfast before class?"

Elsa blinks once, twice, three times. "I-I-I..." she swallows. "But I need to- I need to shower."

Her hands are shaking. What the hell? She glares at them, but they don't stop. She's really, really agitated, and Anna is just standing there, way too close, looking at her.

"Aww, no you don't, Elce." Anna flips a hand at her. "Your hair already looks amazing. You could just leave it like that if you wanted. Actually," she glances down at Elsa's jeans and wrinkled t-shirt, "it looks like you're already dressed, too. Late night?" She winks.

Elsa can feel her face flushing a bright, humiliating red. Her fingers curl into fists. Her breathing is becoming more labored. Her chest is tightening like a screw, twisting around and around, driving into a wall. Is she angry? Is she panicking? It's impossible to know. All she knows is that the sound in her ears is starting to buzz, and the edges of her vision are getting fuzzy. Suddenly, she's scared.

"No!" she says, forcefully. "No, please. I just want to shower and be left alone."

She can't handle having another person in her space. She really can't, not after so long being alone. It's overwhelming. She's freaking out. She's breathing way too fast and her chest is heaving as her lungs struggle to keep up. God, why is she like this? Why is she such a spaz? Why can't she have normal relationships with people? Why does she always freak out like this? Of course, she knows the answer. She does.

She does.

She just doesn't want to think about him right now. His eyes, his hair, his teeth, and _her_ hands on his gun. _Her_ hands in the police station as they dust her for gunpowder residue. _Her_ hands on the steering wheel while her mom cries in the passenger seat. A flare of hot anger shoots up her spine so suddenly that she almost loses control. How long has it been since she's felt this strongly? The thought terrifies her.

Conceal.

Don't feel.

Elsa's fingers twitch with a sudden, familiar need, an intoxicating craving. Pain. She needs pain. Pain ends the cycle. Pain breaks the loop. She shuts her eyes and digs her nails into the palm of her hand.

"Oh," Anna breathes. Her voice sounds strange, strangled, tight.

Elsa's eyes fly open as she remembers her roommate. Anna's cheeks are pink and her eyes have shifted to the side. She looks embarrassed.

"I-I'm sorry," she says. "I just thought - I mean, I didn't mean to- yeah, I'll just go. See you later!"

Elsa seethes quietly as Anna spins on her heel, grabs her bag, and all but sprints from their dorm room. She flinches as the door slams. Her skin is hot and cold, and she is definitely not okay. Her face falls into her hands. She wants to curl into a ball and pull the blanket over her head. It physically pains her that there isn't enough time to do that before class.

She drags herself into their tiny bathroom to take a scalding hot shower. Her hands find the slick tiles and she braces herself under the water as her throat constricts. She is such a bitch sometimes. She is so pathetic. Really, she couldn't just go to breakfast, or at least refuse nicely? What would Olaf say? Her mother would be so disappointed, which is a gut churning thought, considering how disappointed Elsa already is in herself. But it's the continuation of a pattern that she recognizes all too well. She was the Ice Queen in high school for a reason. Her classmates already knew not to get too close. They respected her boundaries. They left her alone. Already Anna seems not to recognize the subtle cues that Elsa is throwing her way. Anna is bright and cheerful and intrepid, the type to climb walls just because they are there and never wonder for what purpose they were erected, what they might be keeping at bay.

Elsa's shoulders sting under the harsh spray and she feels awful. It's only the first day of the semester, but already her body hurts. Her eyes hurt. Her head hurts. Her chest hurts. She thinks that if she can just make it to class, start the ball rolling, that everything will get better. She only needs momentum, like a toboggan on a snowy hill.

She repeats this to herself like a mantra as she trudges to class under a perfect blue sky, as the birds chirp cheerfully all around her. Autumn sunlight beams down through the tree boughs, lighting golden patterns on the sidewalk, but Elsa feels like a black hole, a shadow where the light cannot touch. She turns her eyes away from everyone she meets and keeps them focused on her feet.

It's a new beginning, but maybe nothing will actually change at all, because she's still the same old Elsa, and she's not sure if that will change.

/-/-/-/-/

Her first day of classes goes well, if uneventfully. She tries to pay attention as her professors pass out syllabi and talk about their plans for the semester. She highlights a few due dates for final papers, and circles a couple passages about attendance, but otherwise she is thinking about Jenny, grabbing her arm and pulling her in close on the sidewalk outside school.

Elsa doodles in the margins of her Lit Trad syllabus while Dr. Bourbon, a stubby man in baggy khakis and a threadbare sweater, goes over the list of required reading in a faint, melodic tone. There's no reason why Anna should be any different than Jenny. She's just her roommate. Jenny has gotten much closer to her on several occasions, and yet, Elsa's never felt quite like this, like she doesn't want Anna to come any closer, like she'll spontaneously combust if she does.

Is it maybe the color of her…

Elsa pauses mid-thought and lifts her pen away from the paper, realizing for the first time that she's spent the entire class period sketching a very detailed pair of eyes.

/-/-/-/-/

She half expects Anna to hit her the next time she sees her, but Anna doesn't hit her. She is, apparently, way too busy to hit her.

"Gosh, do we have opposite schedules or what?" Anna laughs. "It's like we never see each other!"

And they don't, really. It's hard to say whether it's intentional or not on Anna's part. Elsa spends half her time studying around campus, so that's not a surprise. What is surprising is that Anna often returns to the room later than she does, and rises for class earlier, too. Elsa has absolutely no idea how she can keep up such a grueling pace. She gets a headache trying to work it out. Just watching Anna's chaotic life from afar is annoying enough.

At the end of their second week, during a strange overlap in their schedules, Anna invites Elsa to get dinner with her in the cafeteria, and this time, Elsa begrudgingly accepts. Anna's indomitable pile of dirty clothes is starting to piss her off, and she's becoming more and more irate that her roommate never has time for full conversations, but she was such an ass before that she really can't say no without making herself look worse, so she pulls on a sweater and grabs her keycard. Her roommate looks relieved already, shoulders loosened, shy smile blooming on her freckled face. Much as Elsa is dreading the meal, she immediately feels lighter.

They ascend the stairs to the dining hall and load their plastic trays with a hodgepodge of dishes: meatloaf, waffles, salad, tater tots, roasted butternut squash. Her roommate chatters about anything and everything as she makes her selections, remarking not once, not twice, but three times how glad she is that she doesn't have to deal with her parents' weird health food kicks.

"I'm pretty sure I'm gonna gain a hundred pounds," Anna confides in her triumphantly as they scan their cards at the register. "I mean, I looked it up. There's no way they have a gluten intolerance, because trust me, they would know, and god, I missed pancakes so much. Oh! Muffins!" Her eyes light up and then dim again just as fast. "Aw, I don't have any room."

Her tray is so crowded it's almost overflowing. She struggles to balance a drink on it as they make their way over to the seating area. Elsa bites her lip and tries to hold in a snicker, but she knows she isn't totally successful when her roommate's cheeks heat up.

"Thanks for coming down with me," Anna says, almost bashfully. "And sorry again, about this morning."

"It's fine." Elsa manages a fragile smile of her own. "You just startled me."

"I'll try to be more careful next time," the redhead says solemnly. "Promise."

"It's fine, really. I just overreacted."

"Friends?" Anna asks.

Elsa hesitates for just half a second. "Okay."

"Oh!" Anna squeals suddenly. "It's Hans!" She hip-checks Elsa, startling the blonde so badly that she nearly drops her tray, and leans in conspiratorially. "He's in my American history class. Gosh, he's just so...hngh. I mean, look at his hair!"

The boy in question is seated with someone against the far wall wearing loafers, and a polo. Elsa winces. He's handsome, and shiny, and he looks like money, and she does not want to look at his hair, even if it _is_ perfectly coiffed, but then he catches sight of Anna and her fate is sealed. He gives the redhead a movie star smile and a little wave, inviting them over.

"Omg, he waved!" Anna gushes, turning to Elsa with puppy dog eyes. "Can we sit with him? Pretty please?"

Elsa would rather eat on the floor of a dirty closet, but Anna's shimmering blue eyes won't let her refuse. She's agreeing before she can stop herself.

"Oh, thank you! Thank you thank you thank you!"

She ducks her head and trudges after Anna, mentally reassuring herself that it's just one dinner, that it can only last so long, that, naturally, all things must end. All she has to do is last for 20, 30 minutes tops, and then she can retreat back to her room and bury herself in her books. Simple enough. Of course, nothing is ever easy.

Hans immediately rubs her the wrong way.

"Anna! Hey!" His voice is slick. "Who is your gorgeous roommate?"

Elsa cringes, but Anna just grins at him, face lighting up like the sun. "I know! Isn't Elsa amazing? Gosh, I'm so lucky! Maybe some of her beauty will rub off on me."

The other boy at the table, heretofore unnoticed by Elsa, snorts into his food.

"She didn't mean it like that, perv," Hans chides, shooting a keen glance at Elsa. "At least I don't think so."

Anna just giggles and blushes again, rambling on some more about how awkward and clumsy she is, but Elsa's skin is already crawling. She sits down next to the mystery boy, across from Anna, and starts the mental countdown. It's already 8 o'clock. She can bail in twenty minutes. Her food sits in front of her like a challenge. She picks at her roasted chicken.

"Have you met my brother?" Hans asks. He smiles at Anna indulgently when she shakes her head. "Well, go on, dude. Introduce yourself."

"Aaron," the boy says gruffly. "Junior chem major."

He looks like Hans, only taller and broader, and where Hans has neatly trimmed auburn sideburns, Aaron has a thick brown beard. His expression is serious as he regards them both. Elsa immediately likes him better. He pushes his glasses up his nose, offers a brief, polite smile, and returns to his meatloaf.

"How do you like it here?" Anna asks him. "I mean- oh, wait, sorry!" She laughs." That must be a really dumb question. Obviously you must like it if you've gone here for three years."

Aaron shoots his brother a quizzical glance. "Sure, I like it."

"Then I'm sure I'll like it, too!" she asserts brightly.

Elsa smiles in spite of herself. It drops off her face when Hans' eyes slide her way.

"So, Emma? What's your story?"

"It's Elsa," she says cooly.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Elsa," she repeats.

Hans laughs and her eyes narrow. "That's an interesting name."

"So's _Hans_."

"Touche," he laughs again, but it sounds just the slightest bit strained.

He turns away from her, moving on without an answer, and she immediately realizes how clever he is. He knows that she isn't going to bite and he's not about to push the issue. He'll take the path of least resistance. She stabs her food forcefully when he begins to question Anna about her schedule.

"I have four classes Monday-Wednesday-Friday, isn't that awful?" Her roommate sighs dramatically. "I mean, at least they're all stacked up, but seriously! I have class from nine until two in the afternoon."

"That means you only have one class Tuesday-Thursday, though right?" Hans smiles at her sympathetically.

He's always smiling at her. Elsa wonders bitterly if it's normal to smile so much at a person. Surely, Anna has noticed how weird it is that his teeth are so white, too white, and how he never really takes his eyes off her. He's watching her so earnestly, so eagerly. It's gross. Elsa chews angrily on a tater tot.

"You're right!" Anna exclaims, entirely too loudly and enthusiastically for the boring subject matter they are discussing. "And it's not until three in the afternoon."

"Oh, lucky!"

Hans makes the cheesiest 'aw shucks' face Elsa has ever seen. Anna looks like she's about two seconds away from literally swooning on the sticky cafeteria table, and Elsa wants to gag both of them with her spoon.

"If you're free Tuesday you should come to my house," Hans suggests smoothly. "We're having a welcome back movie night."

"You live in a house?" Anna's brows soar up behind her bangs. "No way!"

Elsa wants to be exasperated with her airheaded roommate, but Anna's confused expression is almost cute. It tickles somewhere low. She settles for rolling her eyes and taking another bite of chicken.

"He's a Delta Chi," Aaron says calmly, hardly glancing up from his food. "We all are."

Anna's eyes expand until she looks like some kind of absurd, ginger owl. "You're in a fraternity?"

It's uttered with holy reverence. Elsa rolls her eyes even harder, and this time Hans takes notice, sharp eyes briefly darting toward hers across the table.

"I am," he replies smugly.

Anna looks awestruck by this for some reason.

"We all are," Aaron repeats.

"What do you mean 'you all'?" Elsa asks suspiciously.

Aaron arches a brow. "All my brothers and I. There's twelve of us."

"Twelve!" Anna exclaims. "Holy cow! That's a lot!"

"Golly gee." Elsa snorts, and immediately flushes when all three sets of eyes at the table turn to look at her.

Oh, what a perfect time for her irritation to slip out into the open. Her roommate's cheeks are burning a little red like she's embarrassed, and Hans' glee is poorly concealed under his feigned indignation. She's not sure when the two of them entered a game of chess, but he's about to make a power move that she knows she isn't going to like.

"Wow, Elsa," he says, false concern dripping from his lips like poisoned honey, "that was kinda harsh."

Sure, now he remembers her name. Elsa's hand tightens around her fork.

"N-no, it's not- it's-" Anna glances at her roommate helplessly, cheeks flaring, but even she can't quite defend someone she doesn't know, someone she's never even had a normal interaction with. "It's fine," she finishes lamely, looking defeated.

Hans smiles like a cheshire cat and puts a comforting hand on Anna's shoulder. "Aw, you're a good roommate."

She returns his smile uncertainly, with all the insecurity of a young, naive girl looking for reassurance, looking for somewhere to invest her trust. She'll go to the movie night on Tuesday. She'll go with Hans wherever he wants to go, because he knows this game so well. He's played it before. He's a professional, and Anna wants to believe in him so much that she's falling right into it. Elsa suddenly feels her stomach lurch, like she's going to be sick if she sits there for another minute. She can feel her lips twisting and her eyes narrowing and her teeth grinding. A faint buzzing begins in her ears.

Hans is a snake in the grass, and all she wants to do is crush him under her heel, but she can't. Anna is looking at him like he's Jesus. Elsa has no power here. Suddenly, the fork clenched in her quivering hand seems like a very convenient weapon, and she realizes that if she stays for another moment she's going to do something stupid.

She stands from the table abruptly, and the chair legs scrape against the floor creating an awful, ear-splitting screech. Everyone looks at her. Elsa doesn't care. She's already grabbing her tray and moving away.

"Elsa?" Anna asks, and her voice sounds so innocent, so genuinely confused, that it literally hurts. "Are you leaving?"

"Yeah," Elsa glances briefly back at her roommate, but her eyes are cold, "I need to get back."

"Oh, um...okay."

Anna looks so uncertain, so disappointed. It's so different than the way she looks at Hans, like the sun shines out of his slimy, frat-boy ass.

"Is everything okay?" Hans' brow is furrowed at Elsa in a poor mockery of concern, and, somehow, his arm has made its way around Anna's back. "You haven't really eaten anything."

"Yeah!" Anna pipes up, desperate for something to latch onto, to break the tension. "Are you okay?"

Elsa feels suddenly very cruel. "I'm fine," she replies icily. "I'm just not enjoying the company much."

Anna's eyes widen. Aaron looks up from his food. Even Hans appears shocked. Elsa turns and leaves without another word, chucking her tray onto the conveyer belt by the door.

That should settle it, then.

Surely, her roommate won't be extending any more invites.

/-/-/-/-/

She makes a beeline for the bathroom when she reaches the dorm and locks the door behind her. Her back slides up against cool, laminated wood. Her fingers grip the hem of her sweater. Blue eyes glare back at her in the mirror, and Elsa's skin flushes red with angry heat. She wants to lash out and smash her reflection. She wants to break something. She wants to hurt someone. She wants to open Pandora's box and let the evil pour out of her in a violent storm of malice and spite, but she can't.

A flash of orange passes behind her eyes.

Elsa breathes in and out until the anger has abated and her head has cleared. It recedes like the ocean tide and leaves exposed a mess of rocks and broken shells, seaweed and bleached wood, the jagged, rotten bits and the guilt, the all-consuming, soul-devouring guilt.

Pushing off the door, Elsa reaches up and flings open the cabinet over the toilet, filled haphazardly with Anna's various soaps and scrubs and beauty products. She digs through the mess with shaking, but determined hands, searching for something useful. There's nothing sharp, but there's a hair straightener. It'll work. Elsa pulls it out and searches until she finds an electrical outlet, and while the ceramic plates heat up she smiles ruefully, wondering if Anna would forgive her for borrowing it without her permission.

Elsa peels down the top of her jeans, grabs the straightener, and presses the edges of the red hot plates into her milky thigh.

Something tells her she would.

/-/-/-/-/


	6. Chapter 6

**5.**

Anna doesn't come home until well after midnight, and by then Elsa has already popped some Nyquil caps to help her sleep. She's only vaguely aware of her roommate passing through the room, shutting door as quietly as possible before shedding her layers, and collapsing into bed. The soft, even rhythm of Anna's breathing filters into Elsa's unconscious and leaves her with vague impressions of piercing blue eyes and fiery red hair. By the time she wakes the next morning, however, wearily dragging her leaden limbs upright, Anna is gone again.

It hits her somewhere deep. It knocks the air out of her lungs, even here sitting in her bed, staring blearily across their space in a rumpled nightshirt, taking in the sight of Anna's empty sheets.

That's how it always is with them.

Soon, Elsa is pushing through the heavy fog of Nyquil and stumbling into the shower, scrubbing too fast and too hard under the spray of water that's too hot. She can't pull herself together fast enough. She can't get out the room fast enough. Anna's bed is empty, and she feels like she'll be empty too if she doesn't leave, like the void will swallow her up and hollow her out. She fears its power. It could take everything, even the anger, and some days that's all she has left.

Elsa grabs her jacket and jogs out the door, barely pausing to lock it behind her.

She's been empty before, and she never wants to be empty again.

/-/-/-/-/

"What do we know about Odysseus so far?" Rumpled and grumpy, Dr. Bourbon paces circles around the floor of the auditorium. "How is he different from the other Greek warriors?" He pauses for a long moment to let the class mull it over, tugging restlessly at the collar of his faded, crewneck pullover. "Well, we know what _Homer_ wants us to know about him, at least, because he harps on it repeatedly. What is he trying to tell us?"

A girl in the front row, with ramrod straight posture, raises her hand.

He points at her. "Yes."

"Odysseus is really clever," she says. "Homer keeps showing him debating over his decisions and trying to pick the best one."

"Yes, good. Odysseus is clever." Dr. Bourbon flashes her a brief twitch of a smile. "This is not to say that he isn't also a strong warrior, it's just that unlike, say, Menelaus, he is also very shrewd. He is a schemer, by nature. Everybody turn to page 65, please, about halfway down the page."

The auditorium is filled with the sound of rustling pages. Elsa holds her copy open in her left hand while she scribbles notes with her right. She's drawing an arrow and adding in a quick note in the margins of her notebook when movement from her right grabs her attention. She glances up.

"Sorry!" a girl whispers to her.

She's tall with short, messy brown hair, a sharp jaw, and a bright smile. She grins apologetically at Elsa, strong biceps flexing under her Foo Fighters t-shirt as she leans in closer.

"I was just peeking at your drawing," she murmurs, and gestures slyly at the sketched pair of eyes peering up blindy from Elsa's syllabus. "It's really good."

"Oh," Elsa whispers, blinking in surprise. "Thanks."

"Are you an artist?"

She shakes her head. "No, I just doodle."

"Cool." The girl smiles again, and glances furtively at the professor. "I'm Sam, by the way," she mutters, under her breath.

"Elsa."

"Nice to meet you."

"Excuse me!" Dr. Bourbon calls out to them loudly without warning, and Elsa nearly leaps out of her chair as every pair of eyes in the auditorium turns to around to look at them. "Is there something I can help you with?"

"No, sir!" Sam answers smartly. "Sorry!"

He levels a look of extreme irritation at them both, and Elsa can feel her face growing hot under his glare. "Next time you're out, got it?"

"Yes, sir."

The professor nods and returns to his lecture, but Elsa can barely hear anything over the blood pounding in her ears. She stares vacantly at the passage they are supposed to be reading from and commands herself to calm down. Sure, she's just been embarrassed in front of 50 people, but it's not the end of the world. She's survived worse.

Much, much worse...

She's trying to remind herself that the time her father got them all thrown out of Red Robin was much more embarrassing when the rustle of paper sliding across the long, wooden desk catches her eye. She turns to read the note that Sam has passed her.

' _Sorry about that! I can buy you a coffee after class to make it up to you.'_

Elsa glances sideways at Sam who is studiously avoiding her gaze. She gazes back down at the note. It's sitting on the desk like a challenge waiting to be accepted.

Lifting her pen, she reaches over and scrawls a quick response.

' _Yes, please.'_

/-/-/-/-/

They walk across campus to the famed Arendelle Espresso Bar immediately after class, packing up their things and ducking out of the auditorium before Dr. Bourbon changes his mind about letting them off easy. The air is crisp like peppermint against Elsa's cheeks as they emerge from the dark into the bright, blue world of autumn. Behind her, the awkward, cubic Whitworth Building looms against a red and gold backdrop of changing oak trees, a standout addition tacked on in the mid 1980s, complete with mocha-colored linoleum floors and painted brick walls. It clashes spectacularly with the rest of campus. Elsa takes a deep breath and wraps her scarf tight around her neck, falling in step with her long-legged classmate.

Samantha Bloch, as she formally reintroduces herself, is extremely friendly, perking up like a fresh daisy under the midday sun. Elsa shivers and pulls the lapels of her jacket tighter as a chilly breeze picks up, but Sam just slings on the red flannel shirt tied around her waist, unfazed. She walks with purpose along the wide path winding between twin science buildings, striding effortlessly through throngs of harried pre-med students, the ones that always seem like impenetrable moving walls when Elsa is walking by herself.

"I'm from Minnesota," Sam says, as they cross over the Lowell Creek bridge. "Duluth, have you heard of it?"

"I think so." Elsa frowns as she tries to place it. "Maybe in a song or something?"

"Man, who would write a song about Duluth?" Sam laughs. "I love that place, but it's not exactly a big deal, if you know what I mean."

Elsa is from the middle of nowhere herself. She knows exactly what Sam means.

"How'd you end up all the way out here?" Elsa asks, suddenly curious.

"My uncle works in the dean's office. I get a family discount."

"Nice."

"What about you?"

"I'm not far from home," Elsa replies, loathe to admit to herself that she now feels much less adventurous than she did before. "I'm from Pennsylvania."

"Where in?"

"Outside Pittsburgh, she replies, nonchalantly, and conveniently neglects to mention that it's actually rather far outside Pittsburgh.

Whatever. There's no point in explaining.

"So you're a gross Steelers fan, then," Sam jokes, wrinkling her nose.

Elsa smirks. "I might be. What're you, a Vikings fan?"

"Patriots, actually." Sam thumps her chest proudly. "My extended family all lives in Cape Cod, and anyway, I've had a crush on Tom Brady since the fifth grade."

Elsa makes a gagging sound, which draws a good-natured laugh out of Sam, who just shakes her head and holds up four fingers. "Whatever. I can't hear you over the awesomeness all the Super Bowl trophies we have."

"Four? That's cute. You _are_ talking to a Steelers fan, you know."

Sam snorts and gives her a light shove.

They continue to chat as they weave their way across the quad towards the student life center. It's more or less like weaving through traffic, dodging herds of students rushing to and from class, flowing downhill toward the cafeteria for lunch. Sam seems to have a natural skill for it, something that could maybe be chalked up to her height and athletic build were it not for the innate grace with which she navigates the crowd, head held high, smiling absently into the sun as Elsa trails along behind her. They file into an outdoor patio filled with people bent over laptops, cellphones, and books, nursing tumblers and mismatching mugs. Sam holds the door for her as they enter the building.

The sour, earthy scent of coffee is immediately overpowering.

"Get whatever you want," Sam offers, jumping in line. "It's on me."

Elsa smiles nervously and peers at the menu on the wall. It's a glorified chalkboard framed in beat up plywood with quirky names and prices written across the front in rainbow chalk. In the bottom leftmost corner someone has drawn a very detailed housecat, curled up asleep beneath an improvised coffee-bean plant. In the opposite corner, an emperor penguin wearing a sash of blue and orange waves a flag that reads, 'Go Arendelle!'

"I've never been here before," Elsa admits, though she's already heard plenty about it through the grapevine. "Is their chai any good?"

Sam pulls out her phone to check a message. "I've only had the drip coffee, but my roommate won't shut up about their chai lattes, so I would just go for it."

Elsa nods absently, suddenly annoyed when she realizes where her thoughts are headed. She bites her lip and tugs on her braid, trying to sort through her feelings. It's incredibly frustrating, like sand running through her fingers. She keeps digging and she never gets to the bottom. There's always more sand to sift through.

"Do you see your roommate very often?" she asks.

"Pretty much every day." Sam stuffs her hands into the pockets of her jeans and rocks on her heels. "Unless she's asleep when I get home."

Elsa frowns, adjusting the straps of her backpack as the line shuffles forward. "Do you guys get along?"

"Sure," Sam smiles, and it's a little lopsided. "I mean, we're pretty different, but she's nice. We both love the Walking Dead, so there's that."

"Sounds nice."

"What about you?" Sam elbows her lightly. "Do you get along with your roommate?"

Elsa's chest constricts a little, and her throat feels sort of tight as she struggles to find an answer that won't sound completely bitter.

"I don't see her all that much," she replies, eyes fixed carefully on the bearded man preparing drinks behind a large, silver espresso machine, "and we've hardly talked, so I'm not sure." She thinks of the incident in the cafeteria, Hans' sneering face, and corrects herself. "Actually, not really."

Sam shoots her a sympathetic smile. "I'm sorry. That sounds like it sucks."

Elsa breathes slowly in and out. "It's fine."

"I'll give you my number so we can hang out, you know, in case you get lonely."

"It's fine, really."

"Well, I'm giving it to you anyway," Sam says, without skipping a beat. "I think we should be friends."

"Friends?"

"Yeah!"

"Okay," Elsa agrees, surprised.

She hands over her phone and lets Sam enter her number, noting the chipped, lime green polish on her nails as her thumbs fly over the screen. A knot loosens in Elsa's chest. Whatever they're doing here, together in the crowded cafe, it's nice. It's really, really nice, because she does miss Jenny, actually, and her mom, and the frustrating familiarities of her burned out little town. This is nice like that, but also in a totally different way. It's also exciting. It's also new and fresh.

Sam hands back her phone and Elsa stares at it, awed. There's a new name in her contacts list.

She hasn't made a new friend in a very long time.

/-/-/-/-/

Burns, as it turns out, behave differently than cuts.

Elsa sits on her bathroom floor after dinner, peeling layers of soaked gauze away from her skin. She had tried to study at her usual spot in the corner of the library for a while, until the blood started seeping through her jeans, and she had to leave to take care of it. Elsa frowns and curses her stupidity. The wounds are open and weeping, and she knows instantly that she pressed too hard with the straightener, Anna's straightener, the one she's already cleaned meticulously with the rubbing alcohol from her shoebox of paraphernalia.

She grits her teeth as she reads from WebMD on her phone. Cuts are her speciality. She knows nothing about caring for burns, clearly, as this one is already at risk of being infected.

It's a pain she didn't anticipate. One she can't control.

How ironic.

She scrolls through the webpage with her thumb, scanning a list of known treatments. The only things that will apparently help are things she doesn't have, and a trip across campus to the nearest Walgreen's sounds awful with a leg that is literally a throbbing, oozing mess. Elsa pours the rubbing alcohol over her thigh before she can chicken out, and bites back a scream, panting hard until the sting subsides. Then she wraps it back up in fresh gauze, picks herself up off the floor, and throws on the loosest pair of flannel pajama pants she owns.

There is one person who is bound to have the medical supplies she needs.

Elsa makes the short, albeit painful, trip down the hall to the RA's room, glancing over her shoulder to make sure no one is coming. It shouldn't take as long as it does to work up the courage to knock on his door, but she's more than a little anxious, not to mentioned pissed off and embarrassed. This thing, whatever it is, with her roommate, has got her really strung out. She's making mistakes that she's never made before. She's losing her grip, and she absolutely doesn't want to be reminded of what happened the last time she lost her grip.

She shakes her head quickly and clears it.

The door in front of her waits, silently. There is music playing behind it, and she can hear a sink running. Elsa steels her resolve, raises her hand, and raps twice.

"Just a minute!" comes the call.

Moments later, a muscular boy with a shaggy blonde hair and tawny, brown eyes answers the door holding a styrofoam cup of instant ramen in his hand. The front of his striped bathroom hangs open to reveal a white undershirt and basketball shorts as he shifts from foot to foot in his reindeer slippers, chopsticks clutched casually in his other hand. The sound of the Rolling Stones spills out into the hallway, and when Elsa peers around him she catches sight of a record player spinning on the desk under the window.

"Um, hi," she says, blandly. "How are you?"

He quirks a heavy brow at her, but Elsa is too busy noticing things like how big his nose is and how rosy his cheeks are to respond. He could be Derek Marshall's attractive older brother.

"Hi." He leans up against the doorframe. "Remind me of your name."

"Elsa."

"Kristoff."

"Nice to meet you."

"Likewise." He scoops up a bundle of ramen with his chopsticks and shovels it into his mouth, chewing and quirking his head to the side as he studies her thoughtfully. "I don't think I've seen you around." He swallows. "Wait, are you Anna's roommate?"

Elsa's stomach drops. "Yeah?"

"Cool." His smile is friendly, even if a little disinterested. "She said good things about you."

Elsa grits her teeth and tries not to roll her eyes. Her leg is still throbbing and it's going to hurt even worse when she has to rip the bandages off again to apply burn cream. The fact that Anna can apparently find time to make conversation to the RA _about_ her, all the while avoiding being home often enough to talk directly _to_ her, makes it sting just a little bit more.

"When did you meet Anna?" she asks, reflexively, and immediately hates herself a little bit for it.

Kristoff shrugs. "At a some frat party the other day. We talked. About you mostly."

"About me?"

"Yeah," he takes another bite of his food and rolls his massive shoulders. "So, what's up, dormie? What'cha need?"

Elsa brushes off her shameless curiosity. "You have a first aid kit, right?"

"Yeah?"

"I need burn cream."

Kristoff studies her evenly. "'Kay, yeah, I haven't got burn cream, exactly, but I have analgesic burn gel. It's ostensibly the same."

"That's fine," Elsa says, impatiently. The pain is starting to get really distracting. "Whatever you've got is fine."

His expression twists a little, and suddenly he seems legitimately curious about her. "Everything okay?" he asks, lightly.

Elsa doesn't like it. "Yeah. Just burned myself, obviously."

Kristoff hums, looking completely unsurprised. He does a quick scan of her body, raising an intrigued brow. When he quirks his lips she knows that he's onto to her. It chills her immediately.

"I've got you, chica," he says, knowingly. "Wait here."

He disappears back into his room, and Elsa folds her arms tight across her torso. She doesn't like the way he looks at her, like he's in peaking in the windows trying to figure out who's home. She hates that it feels so invasive, that her hair is standing on end.

"Here." He returns with a packet of burn gel and slaps it into her hand. "This should hold you over until you can get to the pharmacy."

Elsa takes the packet and thanks him brusquely.

She can feel his eyes on her back as she limps back to her room.

/-/-/-/-/

"That's what I've been trying to tell you. We're officially dating now! He's taking me to dinner tonight!"

Two days later, on a rare Saturday night when they're both in the dorm together, Anna is curling her hair at the vanity mirror in the corner, iPhone wedged between her cheek and her shoulder, doing an odd little dance as she reaches for another roller. She's wearing a burgundy dress that hugs her chest and flows over her hips, and Elsa is determinedly not looking at her.

"I sent you a photo… Yeah… Did you see it? I know, right?! He's so flippin' cute!" Anna sticks a bobby pin between her teeth. "I tol' 'im ish doeshn' needsh t'be- huh?" she extracts the pin from her mouth and pulls back her bangs. "Sorry. I told him it doesn't need to be a really fancy place, but he insisted."

Huddled up behind her laptop, Elsa rolls her eyes.

"Some steakhouse," Anna replies, to whoever is on the phone. "No… Well, maybe, I don't know. I like steak." She giggles. "I do! Really!"

She hops unsteadily on one leg as she slides a leather pump onto the opposite foot. Elsa peers over the top of her screen in spite of herself. Anna's only just managed to get the other shoe on her foot when the phone slips and crashes into onto the counter.

"Shit!" she jerks, eyes widening, and drops the curling iron on her foot. "Augh! Son of a bitch!"

She's hopping around in front of the vanity for an entirely different reason now and Elsa has to stifle her laughter as a crackly, disembodied voice floats up from the phone on the countertop. Wincing, Anna retrieves it and presses it against her ear.

"Sorry. What?" She huffs as she retrieves the curling iron off the carpet. "No, I dropped my phone. I'm trying to do too many things at once. Can I call you back later? Yeah, after the date… All the details! I promise! Okay...okay...love you, too. Bye!"

Elsa takes a deep breath, rolls her shoulders, and stares with renewed focus at the blinking cursor in her Word document. She has 500 words down already. If she can just get 200 more...

"You have a paper?" Anna asks nonchalantly. It's the first thing they've said to each other besides 'hello' or 'goodbye' in over a week, and her roommate's casual tone is just a bit too forced to sound genuine. "Isn't it kind of early for papers?"

Elsa's pretty sure it's never too early for papers in college, but this isn't a paper. Her history professor is forcing them to journal about their assigned reading. She glances up from her screen to respond, but the words die on her tongue. Anna's got her hips locked against the counter, leaning over a pile of makeup containers while she applies mascara. The fluorescent light has washed out her fiery hair and rosy cheeks. Her teal eyes seem to glow like gems from a mask of white as the wand curls delicately over her lashes. Her teeth sink into plump lips, and dig in, forming soft grooves, before retracting again. Anna plunges the wand back into its tube and fans her eyes with her fingers.

"I, uh…" Elsa begins inarticulately. "It's...yeah."

"Oh, jeez, sorry." Anna licks her thumb and leans in to brush away an errant black mark. "I'm probably distracting you."

The impulse rises in Elsa to be mean, but she squashes it. "No, it's fine."

Anna smiles in the mirror. "What class is it for?"

"Am Civ."

"One or two?"

"One."

"Hm." Anna pokes a dangly feather earring through her ear. "I tested out. Is it interesting?"

Elsa peaks down at her half finished sentence about the now mostly eradicated indigenous peoples of Florida. "It's kind of sad, actually."

"Yeah. It seems like most of history was pretty much just depressing or awful." Anna's pale fingers slide into her bright red hair as she works to remove the first of several rollers. "What horrible atrocity are you writing about today?"

"Andrew Jackson." Elsa unfolds her stiff legs so they're hanging off the mattress. "I guess he killed a bunch of people."

"God, who didn't." Anna sighs dramatically. "I swear we spend all our time reading about mass murderers."

"The winners write the books."

"What if the indians won?" she muses, "excuse me, Native Americans. Jeez, we still call them indians just because Columbus was an idiot. Do you think it'd be like Pocahontas?"

"What, like with singing?"

"No," Anna snorts, "obviously not. I mean like, what would the history books say if the settlers lost?"

Elsa leans back against the wall. "Hm. That we sunburn easily, probably."

Her roommate laughs as she removes another roller. "Probably."

A brief silence passes between them, but the temperature in the room has warmed considerably. Elsa is even a bit giddy as she congratulates herself for being functionally sociable. Anna has finished removing her rollers and is now fluffing her hair in the mirror, turning this way and that, trying to catch every angle. Satisfied, she grabs her purse, slides into a long, obviously borrowed cardigan, and walks over to the door next to Elsa. She grabs a scarf off the coat rack on the wall and winds it around her neck as she checks her watch.

"Shit, I'm already late."

Elsa feels a knot form in her chest. "I...like your dress," she says, twisting the end of her braid. "It looks good on you."

The redhead blinds her with a dazzling smile, and her heart skips a beat. Whatever awkwardness there was between them evaporates.

"Thanks!"

"You're welcome."

"You should wear your hair down more often," Anna says, and her fingers reach towards Elsa's braid for a split second before she twitches and retracts them. "It's um...well, you look hot with it down."

Elsa swallows thickly. "Thanks."

Anna giggles. "I bet you get all the boys."

"Oh, yeah," Elsa twists a lock of white gold around her finger, "hordes of them. You can borrow a few if you promise to return them when you're done."

They laugh together and Elsa's head feels light, almost airy, until a soft hand settles on her arm and she flinches away. Anna gives her a strange, probing look.

"Sorry," she says, though she doesn't look very sorry at all.

"Sure." Elsa's fingers tap nervously against her laptop keys.

"I'll be back around midnight."

"I'll be asleep by then, probably."

"Okay."

"Have fun?"

Anna's answering smile is a little stilted. "Thanks. Good luck with your paper."

After she leaves, Elsa catches a whiff of lavender perfume, and glances down at her screen to find that she has typed a string of gibberish.

/-/-/-/-/

She doesn't see her roommate for another week.

It's kind of a relief.

/-/-/-/-/

"Are you sure she's still alive?" Sam asks one night.

They're sitting across from one another in the cafeteria, surrounded by books and papers and trays of breakfast food. It's some event that the school does for midterms and finals, allowing the students to camp out and study while they eat. Elsa, who normally has to sneak bagels and muffins into the library, is immensely grateful for it. She rolls up the sleeves of her sweatshirt so she can eat chunks of her pancakes without dragging her arm through syrup. Across from her, Samantha has her long legs splayed out under the table, jostling the metal legs whenever she moves, which almost constantly now after three cups of coffee.

"I have no idea," Elsa says, stuffing a french fry in her mouth. "Haven't seen her since Saturday."

"You should text her."

Elsa shrugs, nudging Sam's knee away from the table so that she can make a quick, steady note in her copy of _The Iliad_. "I don't have her number."

Sam chews thoughtfully on the end of her pen cap. "I mean, she must come back sometimes to get her books. At least a change of clothes, right?"

"It's really hard to tell," Elsa says acerbically. "Her side of the room is such a disaster that it's impossible to tell what's been moved around."

Sam frowns, because the comment sounds uncharacteristically bitter coming from someone as cool as Elsa, but she decides to leave that stone unturned. She musses her hair for the umpteenth time, a nervous habit exacerbated by stress and caffeine. It's already sticking up on one side, and now it looks like a complete bird's nest.

"I mean, maybe she just had a good time with Hans."

Elsa arches a brow.

"A really, really good time."

"Yeah, but right before midterms?" Elsa shakes her head irritably. "How can someone be so irresponsible? When does she study? She won't get to have her stupid college boyfriend if she fails her classes."

"Yeah, uh, I dunno," Sam says, eyes widening a bit. "That does seem risky."

"Risky? It's totally childish."

"I mean, if you're worried, maybe you should tell campus security."

"I'm not worried," Elsa snaps. "I barely even know her. Why should I care?"

"Good question."

Elsa glares up at Sam who raises her hands in a sign of surrender.

"Sorry, sorry. Dropping it now."

They go back to studying in silence.

/-/-/-/-/

Anna finally returns Thursday morning as Elsa is getting ready for her last midterm. She's wearing leggings and a Delta Chi sweatshirt that is three sizes too big as she cruises through the door, tossing her book bag into the growing pile of detritus on her bed.

"Fancy seeing you here," Elsa greets acidly, but Anna just flashes her a smile.

"Yeah, I know right? Crazy!"

She flies into the shower immediately, slamming the bathroom door behind her, effectively cutting off any further communication.

Elsa is extremely annoyed for the rest of the day.

/-/-/-/-/


	7. Chapter 7

**6.**

It's a cold Saturday afternoon in late October when things slowly begin to unravel, and for all that Elsa has been expecting the worst, it still manages to sneak up on her.

The library is closed for repairs, something about a leaky roof, so Elsa is sitting on her bed next to a thick copy of Aristotle's Metaphysics, opened to the pages assigned for class. She hasn't gotten very far. The room is a bit too warm for real studying. It's making her head fuzzy. Instead, she's gotten distracted trying to re-dress the burns on her thigh. They have finally closed up enough to scab over, making the whole process a lot less painful, and really she's just happy she'll be able to wear tight jeans again.

Elsa's wadding up the old bandages and delicately smearing on a new layer of aloe vera gel when her phone starts to buzz on the desk. She reaches out blindly, fumbling until she happens upon the device, and answers without looking, expecting to hear Sam's cheerful voice asking if she wants to get dinner. Instead, she hears her mother's voice, and her stomach flips. She's already dreading the conversation she knows they're going to have.

"Hi, honey."

Elsa takes a shaky breath and reluctantly caps the burn gel. "Hi, Mom."

How's school going?"

"Fine." She glances at the Arendelle U. calendar above her desk and scans the dates, finding the one circled in red pen. "I just had midterms."

"Oh, good," her mother says, politely. "How'd they go?"

"Fine. I'm not worried."

"Your grades have always been good."

"Yeah." She drops her gaze to the roll of gauze in her hand. "How are you?"

"I'm okay. Work's been stressful. You know, not too much to complain about."

Elsa's eyes squeeze shut. "Yeah."

"I'm going to visit your father's grave this weekend. It's coming up on one year."

The spool of gauze slips from her fingers and tumbles onto the bedspread. "I know."

"I'm not expecting you to go… I'm just putting it out there."

Elsa's stomach rolls, and she tastes the acrid flavor of bile on her tongue. Outside her window, the first snow of the season is falling. Another cold winter is scheduled for the northeastern states, and it's so fitting, so reminiscent of that time, that she can feel herself slipping, even as she tries desperately to hold on.

"Don't," she says, with unexpected force. "Please."

"Elsa-"

"Don't put it out there," she snaps. "Don't tell me about it. I don't want to hear about it."

Her mother is silent for a long time, maybe a couple minutes. Elsa doesn't count. She doesn't break the silence. They are standing toe to toe, and Elsa refuses to back down. She'd pull the trigger again. She wants her mother to know that.

"Okay."

Elsa's chin quivers, walls crumbling suddenly and unexpectedly. "I killed him," she whispers. "I shot him point blank in the face. How can you ask me to visit him when I'm the one-"

"-It's okay, baby."

"Mom, please-"

"-It's okay, Elsa. It's okay, baby."

Her eyes burn, and her throat is so tight that she can't swallow her tears. "How is any of this fucking okay?"

"It wasn't your fault," her mother insists, as if that makes anything better. "You were just trying to protect us."

Elsa's heart stops.

She wants to scream.

Because it doesn't. It doesn't make anything better. It doesn't fix a single thing. Her mom still doesn't get it, can't see what's right in front of her.

Won't.

Elsa hangs up the phone, silences it, and chucks it on her desk. The snow is coming down harder. Flat white flakes flicker between the blinds as she curls herself into a ball. She bites down her knuckles and lets the tears trickle over her fingers.

It's the first time they've talked since August, and it's still about him.

/-/-/-/-/

She wakes up in the dark hours later to find that someone has covered her with a blanket. The gauze and the aloe vera have been placed on the desk next to her bed, and a few of Anna's items have shifted around. The yellow scarf that was hanging on the peg behind the door is gone. Her boots, left in a pile next to her bed are also gone. Anna's closet door, the one that Elsa is always closing, has been left open again.

Elsa lifts her head, groggily, and spies the mascara stain on her comforter. Her head is heavy and sore, like it's full of mucus. Shifting over onto her back, she reaches down below her bunched up track shorts to feel the uncovered lattice of burns on her bare thigh, the ones she hadn't finished dressing before the call.

Which means...

Fuck.

/-/-/-/-/

The nightmares return sometime in the early morning hours.

Elsa wanders the Arendelle campus in an orange jumpsuit, chasing down faceless, shrieking students with a shotgun. Hot, steaming blood splatters across her face, freezing instantly in the cold as bodies fall all around her.

When she turns she finds a crimson trail of corpses behind her, and it brings a wrathful smile to her gruesome face.

She screams herself awake.

The blankets won't come off fast enough. She's twisted in the sheets and covered in sweat, and her heart is pounding like a jackhammer. She cries with relief when she wipes her face and it comes back clean. It feels so real every time, the hot gun barrel, the stiff recoil, the metallic click of shells against concrete.

And nothing feels more real than the satisfaction.

She pulls on her shoes and goes for a run.

/-/-/-/-/

The library is closed all weekend, but Elsa is too anxious to stay in the room, so she calls Sam and arranges a Sunday night Netflix marathon, just so she can stay out a little later. Sunday is the one night a week that Anna is most often home, however briefly, and though she refuses to admit it to herself, Elsa is most definitely avoiding her. She even packs a toothbrush and a pair of pjs in case she's too chicken to walk home.

Outside, the snow is coming down as hard as ever. The path into campus is churned up with tracks that are rapidly freezing again, and the grassy lawns are full of lopsided snowmen with odd props wearing ridiculous hats and cast-off clothing. Arendelle's student body has taken to the storm with gusto, and the shouts of a distant snowball fight carry up the hill from the pond behind her dorm. Weather forecasters across the region are making headlines with exclamatory declarations about the lake effect snow coming too early, and preliminary preparations for the coldest winter ever. Elsa smiles and catches a flake on her tongue.

She kind of likes it.

She likes the electric buzz of anticipation, the way perfect strangers can bond and become instant friends as soon as the weather turns bad.

If some people are made for the sun, then Elsa is made for the snow, and so, it seems, is Sam. She meets Elsa at the front steps of Halmoni Hall dressed optimistically in a hoodie and a fleece hat.

"You sure you won't be cold?" Elsa asks dryly, because she's not actually sure whether this is supposed to be some sort of Minnesotan display of bravado, and she wouldn't put it past Sam to do something as ridiculous.

"It's just up the hill," Sam scoffs.

"It's a ten minute walk!"

"Oh, c'mon. Eight at best."

Elsa rolls her eyes. "You have longer legs, alright? Go easy on the little people."

They make it to the dining hall in twelve because Elsa keeps sliding, and Sam takes advantage of the opportunity to lecture her about purchasing proper winter boots. It's as annoying as it is endearing. Jenny was always of the opinion that Elsa could take care of herself, and recently her mother has been just a little too distracted to notice the things that Elsa keeps from her. So, it's kind of nice to have someone fret. She's actually smiling as they knock the snow off their boots in front of the glass doors and tromp inside out of the cold.

"Pack in extra tater tots and stuff," Sam says, scanning her badge quickly and descending on the food. "We'll need the munchies for later."

Elsa grabs a tray and a pair of silverware. "They won't let us get to-go boxes if we're eating here."

"It's Sunday!" Sam calls from down the line, piling pasta and ham onto her plate. "They don't care! They're just trying to get rid of stuff before the next shipment comes in tomorrow!"

Glancing sidelong at the cashier, who is studiously filing her nails over the register, Elsa snatches a plate and a styrofoam container, and rushes to catch up. "What all do you want?"

"I dunno. Fries, tots, cereal, pancakes-"

"Pancakes?"

"Yeah, sure, why not!"

"How about french bread sticks?" Elsa stops in front of the depleted breakfast station.

Sam just waves her approval from the dessert cart. Apparently it doesn't really matter to the human garbage disposal. She just grabs whatever finger-food she can as she makes her way through the rest of the line.

"So, I kind of have a surprise for us," Elsa admits, hesitantly, once they've sat down at one of the long, empty tables near the panoramic windows.

"Oh, yeah?" Sam stuffs a steaming lump of mashed potatoes into her mouth. "Whassat?"

"Um, so… earlier, when I was picking up the room a bit, I found a…" Elsa glances around furtively and lowers her voice. "I found a bottle of vodka on the floor."

Sam nearly chokes on her potatoes. "What?" She swallows hastily, eyes watering. "Really?"

"Yeah, it's only half-full, but-"

"-Is it Anna's?"

Elsa frowns. "It's obviously not mine."

"Whoa, dude!" Sam leans back in her chair, clearly impressed. "And you just brought it with you? Does she know you have it?"

"No."

"That's pretty ballsy. What're you gonna do if she comes looking for it?"

Elsa shrugs. Initially, she had snatched up the bottle in a fit of annoyance. What was Anna thinking? What if an RA came by and found it? It was a small probability, but it still wasn't worth the risk. They would both get fined, and be slapped with an alcohol citation that would land Elsa on the probation list and jeopardize her scholarship. It didn't make sense at all, especially when Anna could stash everything at her boyfriend's place without consequence. Why would she even bring booze back to the dorm in the first place? Was she really that haphazard? Absent minded? And then, to just leave it on the floor of the room like that without a thought.

It didn't add up.

"I'll tell her I had to dump it because the RA came by."

Sam smirks. "Nice."

"Yeah."

"I still can't believe you just took it. That seems so unlike you, Elce. Stealing your roommate's illegal shit like a boss."

Elsa rolls her eyes and digs into her food. "I was mad that she brought it back to the dorm and left it out in the first place. It's so stupid. Like, even _she_ can't be that stupid, right?"

"I dunno. She sounds like one of those messy people." Sam douses a broccoli floret in mayonnaise. "Like, a hot mess."

"You're not just talking about Mt. Laundry-more."

"No. I mean the whole thing." Sam makes a big circle with her arms. "The whole ooey-gooey package."

Elsa makes a face at her lasagna. "Speaking of ooey-gooey."

"I told you not to get it. The lasagna's always gross here."

"Everything's gross here."

"No, it's not. You're just in a mood." Sam ditches the broccoli and takes a bite of her brownie, tilting her head thoughtfully. "You know, actually, you're pretty much always in a bad mood when the subject of Anna comes up. Maybe you need a new roommate."

Elsa starts to agree and then catches herself. The thought doesn't really make her any happier.

"I don't know." She scrunches her brow and stares vacantly at her tray.

"Just think about it," Sam replies, licking her thumb. "You nearly bite my head off every time you bring it up."

Elsa feels simultaneously both confused and annoyed for what has to be the hundredth time in two months. It's not that having a cleaner, tidier roommate wouldn't be nice, because it would actually be really, really nice. She's nearly twisted her ankle at least three times tripping over junk on the floor, and it's become a regular chore to make sure Anna's piles don't migrate onto her side of the room, but there's just something about her redheaded, human-disaster of a roommate that she's not ready to give up.

Elsa's eyes widen as she comes to a sudden realization.

She's _intrigued_.

Anna's smile is so bright and disarming, but Elsa knows there's more there. She can sense it lurking underneath, the subtle buzz of static in a clear signal. Anna is enigmatic. She's a mystery that Elsa never has time to solve, and maybe, _maybe_ , that's why her roommate is so flighty. Maybe she knows that Elsa can feel it. Maybe she knows that Elsa is watching. Maybe she is trying to hide something, and if there's anyone who knows about hiding it's Elsa.

Elsa is a monster hiding in plain sight.

Because of Anna, there are things she coming to realize about herself, unsettling things, disquieting things. Elsa knows now that she's jealous. It's completely weird and it feels all wrong because she's never really been a jealous person. She wants to deny it, write it off as a fluke, but she can't. Something about Anna seems to inspire it in her. She absolutely hates that Hans gets all of Anna's time, that Anna can't spare an hour or two with her just to talk, to get to know her. Sure, it might be Elsa's fault for being a bitch those first couple weeks, but since then Anna has hardly given her a chance to make up for it. It's driving her up a wall. This feeling of jealousy is under her skin and it's burrowing deeper all the time. She can't shake it anymore.

"You like her, don't you?"

Elsa's head snaps up. " _What_?"

"Yeah." Sam smiles knowingly. "I know what that's like. You think you're friends with someone, but then they never make time for you. It sucks."

Elsa has to blink three times in rapid succession and breathe slowly in and out before she realizes what Sam means. Which...what the hell. What else would Sam mean?

"I...just wish she'd talk to me sometimes," Elsa says, slowly, carefully gauging Sam's reaction as she speaks. "She's not so bad in person. Just messy."

"Makes sense." Sam polishes off her first brownie and moves on to the next. "Well, how about you just tell her that?"

"I've got a better idea. How about we go watch Netflix and drink vodka instead?"

Sam laughs and gathers up her stuff. "You know _I'm_ definitely not opposed."

They navigate the weather and eat tater tots while they watch _Bob's Burgers_ on Sam's bed. Sam only seems to like cartoons, and Elsa doesn't really care what they watch anyway. She's having too much fun laughing along and passing the bottle, letting the warmth of vodka settle on her raw nerves like the snow that's building up on the ledge outside.

/-/-/-/-/

She spends the night sleeping head to foot in Sam's room and gets up early to make the walk of shame across campus, hair swirled up into a messy bun, flannel pajama bottoms tucked into her boots. The sun is just peaking above the clouds and everything is covered in a flawless, sparkling blanket of snow. Even the path, turbid and disturbed yesterday evening, has been covered overnight, and she hears the distinct sound of shovels scraping against concrete as a groundskeepers work to clear the walkway of building up the hill. They've gotten more than a foot since Saturday. Snow drifts have gathered up against tree trunks and curbsides, their summits peaking against the light, casting deep blue shadows in their wake. Red-breasted robins flit from branch to branch, sending showers of snow and ice down onto the path below. Elsa smiles faintly and kicks the powder in front of her as she walks, chipping away at jagged ridges of ice left by old bootprints beneath the fresh layer of white.

It doesn't really bother her that she's a bit hungover. The air is crisp and bracing, and the cold feels good on her clammy skin. She sucks down one deep breath after another, hoping to settle her stomach before class, wishing there were some way to bottle the feeling in her chest. Her body is always lightest when the weight has been momentarily lifted.

She takes a detour around the pond to stretch her walk out just a little bit longer.

Anna is asleep in her bed when Elsa creeps through the door, arm hanging listlessly off the mattress. She's covered herself loosely with a blanket and stuffed her head under a pillow, but she's still wearing tight black jeans and combat boots, as though she'd stumbled in the door and literally collapsed into bed. It freezes Elsa for a moment. Her heart skips a beat, and she has to catch herself against the closet door, world spinning a bit, even still. She glances around at the room and notices a fresh trail of items leading to Anna's bed. There's a bag of Swedish Fish spilling out onto the carpet, an empty can of Monster, a lighter, a bomber jacket that must belong to Hans, and…cigarettes? She spies a green bikini top hanging from the bathroom door and squints at it.

That's weird.

Anna had seemed so naive at first. Elsa isn't sure what to make of the scene in front of her. Is her roommate some kind of Delta Chi groupie now?

She chews her lip and tries to imagine Anna mashing red solo cups with a room full of fraternity bros, tight, black jeans stretching across her narrow hips as she cheers over a victorious beer pong shot...

A loud knock at the door startles Elsa so badly that she loses her balance. The loose closet door creaks as steadies herself. She clutches her chest and looks around, confused as the knocking starts up again. Anna hasn't even stirred in her bed.

"Coming!" Elsa says quickly.

She turns, slowly to hold off the nausea, and answers the door.

"Hans!" she exclaims, surprised.

"Elsa." He smiles lightly, and looks her over. "Good morning."

"Um, hi."

"I like this look." He smirks, and Elsa notices that he is already showered and ready for the day, dressed smartly in blue parka, slim black trousers, and leather boots. "It's sort of...Midnight-Target-Run Chic."

Elsa rolls her eyes and glances over her shoulder at the motionless lump in the other bed. Hans cranes his neck and peers around her.

"She's not up yet?" He wrinkles his nose and checks his watch. "But I made sure to come 10 minutes late."

"She seems a little worse for wear," Elsa muses slowly.

Hans snorts. "I bet. You're not looking so hot yourself."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing, nothing." He holds up both hands and winks. "Just that I'm pretty sure Anna isn't the only one who had too much fun last night."

Elsa's eyes narrow in suspicion. Is he talking about the vodka…?

"Are you always a jerk?" she snaps. "Or just when I'm around?"

He stuffs his hands into his pockets and rocks back on his heels. "Cool your jets, kujo. I'm only messing with you. Can I come in or are you just gonna make me stand out here all morning?"

"I'm seriously thinking about it."

"Aw, you wouldn't."

"You really overestimate how much I like you."

Hans has the decency to look a tiny bit wounded. "Seriously, Elsa? What did I ever do to you, huh? You've hated me since day one."

The twinge of guilt she feels is immediately drowned out by the sound of Anna squeaking as she falls off the bed. Elsa glances over her shoulder and immediately makes eye contact with the furtive redhead, splayed out on the floor with mascara smeared all over her face. A silent exchange passes between them. She knows, instinctively, that Anna does not want her to let Hans inside.

Elsa whips around and fills up the doorway as much as she can.

"It's your sideburns," she says dryly. "They're totally ridiculous. I want to shave them off so bad that it fills me with rage whenever I see them."

Hans frowns. "Don't knock the burns."

"I'd really like to knock them off your face."

"You're seriously kind of crazy, you know that?"

Elsa rolls her eyes. "And you're seriously kind of unlikeable. Wait here, please. Anna is changing."

She goes to close the door in his face and Hans tries to stop it with his foot. "Wait-!"

"-Outside!" Elsa commands, and slams the door.

When she turns back around, a moment later, Anna is trying to peel off her skin tight jeans, and Elsa falls back against the door, fully unprepared to deal with the sight of Anna's bare legs, toned and creamy white, slender rising through the knees, bulging with lean muscle around her thighs. Elsa's eyes slide up and around her ass, a full, delicate curve of smooth skin, covered with nothing but a flimsy black thong. Soon, even that obstruction is gone. Anna stumbles out of her pants and quickly strips off the thong, turning to give Elsa a full view of her womanly charms from behind. It's like a taking a punch right in the gut from Mike Tyson. Anna's butt is amazingly round and cute, and there are freckles, and dimples, and it's practically magnetic. The gift of speech leaves Elsa for a full five seconds before she recovers enough sense to close her eyes.

But it's too late. Her limbs are frozen and she's hot all over, everywhere that veins run and blood flows. Elsa hears the telltale pounding in her ears, feels the shortness of breath in her lungs, and guesses that she's moments away from a full blown panic attack.

"Oh! Sorry, Elce."

She flinches. Anna's voice hits her like a bolt of electricity, frying her nerves, and shorting her fuse. A uncontrollable shudder rolls up her spine. Elsa bites the inside of her cheek to hold in the moan that threatens to spill out into the room.

"You can look now." Anna snorts softly. "I'm wearing clothes."

Elsa cracks one eyelid to check, then slowly opens the second. Anna is smiling at her coyly in lacy purple leggings and a dark green dress. Her makeup is still smeared, and her hair is still tangled, but she is absolutely beautiful. The smouldering look in her warm, blue eyes says she knows it. It burns a hole through Elsa's chest and buries itself somewhere deep. She is positively, ridiculously, _embarrassingly_ , slack-jawed at the sight.

Her roommate's smile dims imperceptibly. "You okay?"

"Uh, yeah, uh…" Elsa's throat bobs. She peels her back away from the door and goes to sit on her bed. "I just wasn't prepared for uh…"

"Nudity?"

"Yeah."

"You're kind of a prude, huh?" Anna laughs as she turns and sails into the bathroom, twisting the squeaky hot water knob to start the tap.

Elsa just sits on her bed and stares into space.

Maybe she is kind of a prude.

/-/-/-/-/

She continues to stare into space for most of her first two classes.

The only thing she writes in her notebook are the names of a couple presidents and, ' _my brain is a pile of slush_ ' in all caps.

She doesn't snap out of it until lunch, when Sam starts waving a hand in her face.

/-/-/-/-/

Anna returns again later that evening, storming into the room with snowflakes melting on her clothes and a hot pink beanie pulled low over her wild, red hair.

"Oh my god!" she exclaims, loudly, tripping over her own boots as she stumbles to her bed and flops down. "I am so flippin' exhausted!"

Elsa, who has been quietly watching Netflix in her sweats, sits up with a start and clutches her blanket to her chest. "Jesus, Anna!"

"Oh, sorry!" Anna's pink cheeks flush a deeper red, and Elsa just stares. "God, I'm so loud. You must hate me."

Elsa clears her throat once, then twice, and finally just decides to change the subject to the question that has been bothering her for months. Sam said to just talk to her, right? Elsa takes the plunge.

"Where do you go all the time?" She asks, fiddling awkwardly with her braid. "Hans' place?"

Anna, for some reason, looks distinctly embarrassed. She leans forward, with a groan, and begins to unlace her boots. "Sometimes."

"Sometimes?"

"Yeah."

"What about the other times. Do you sleep on park benches?"

"Okay," she faces Elsa, blushing furiously, "most of the time."

Elsa quirks a brow.

"Okay, okay, so all the time."

"He must fuck like a pornstar," Elsa snipes, and then, almost immediately, her hand flies to her mouth.

She can't believe she just said that.

Anna doesn't laugh.

"Um…" the redhead eyes her cautiously, like she's ticking bomb, ready to explode at the slightest provocation. "Is everything okay?"

Elsa scrambles out of bed and stands, awkwardly, looking around for her shoes. The room is cold beyond the confines of her cozy blankets, and she immediately shivers. Cold is good. Like a cold shower. She'll just run downstairs to the vending machine for a soda or something, clear her head. Without warning, a vision of Anna, naked from the waist down, flashes through her mind for the fiftieth time that day, and she flushes all over. Where are her shoes? She really just needs to clear her head.

Anna is wide-eyed now, watching her hyperventilate with more than a little concern on her face. "I don't want to pry or anything. I'm not like, trying to be nosy, but you just...don't seem… Um, I saw some…on your..."

Elsa freezes and turns to look at her. Anna's head is down, chin brushing her clavicle like she's ashamed of something, a child put in timeout. It's adorably tragic. Elsa's heart skips and slows.

"You saw what?" she asks, biting her lip.

Anna sighs. "Do you not like me?" She lifts her gaze. "I mean, I know I'm a mess," she glances forlornly at the piles of the clothes on and around her bed, the forest of cosmetic bottles on the vanity. "I know I keep odd hours, and I'm super busy- I'm really sorry about that, by the way -but, it seems like I've done something to offend you, and if I have, please just tell me what it is so I don't do it again."

"I..." Elsa pauses, and realizes that she doesn't know what to say.

She _is_ pissed at Anna, isn't she? Sam had basically pushed her to get a new roommate, since she's spent so much time complaining about it, but that isn't what she wants. It isn't what she's looking for. She doesn't really know what she's looking for. If she's being completely honest, she isn't even sure what she's mad about.

She huffs and drops down onto her bed, golden braid bouncing against her chest. She clasps her hands between her knees and stares resolutely at the floor, as though she could divine some kind of answer from the industrial grey and blue stitching.

"I think we just got off on the wrong foot," she mumbles. "I don't know."

"We're really different," Anna muses.

Elsa looks ups, surprised by her candor. "Different how?"

Anna laughs nervously and rubs the back of her neck. "Are you kidding?"

"No, not really."

She wrings her hands. "I mean, you're gorgeous, and smart, and you're always cool and collected and tidy." Anna gazes helplessly at her mismatching, pink and green snowflake socks. "And I'm like, totally awkward and messy and disorganized."

"What?" Elsa shakes her head. "You're not awkward."

"C'mon, I totally am!"

"No way! You have a boyfriend and you go to parties and stuff, right?"

"That doesn't mean anything-"

"Yeah, it does! I mean, I don't have a boyfriend, and I _definitely_ don't go to parties."

"Definitely not," her roommate mumbles.

Stung, Elsa shakes her head and looks away.

Anna sighs. "How about we just start over?" She smiles, coaxing a faint chuckle out of Elsa. "Let's just hang out or something."

"Okay. What should we do?"

"I don't know. What do awesomely cool people do when they hang out?"

Elsa smirks and glances at her laptop. "Do you wanna watch Netflix?"

"Fuck yes." Anna strips out of her coat in the blink of an eye and pads across the room. "Move over," she says, plopping down on the bed. "What are we watching?"

" _Sherlock_." Elsa settles back against the wall, and her heart skips a beat when Anna cuddles up against her side.

She's starting to think she has a heart murmur.

"I've heard good things," Anna says, yawning.

"Yeah, I've only just started, but I like it." Elsa fingers are tingling, and she curls them once, twice, to dispel the feeling.

"Have you read the books?"

"Yeah."

"I've always wanted to." Anna yawns again and scoots closer, pulling a stray blanket over them. "I just never seem to have the patience for books."

Elsa leans forward to restart the show, mindful of the warm body shifting against her side. "All the best things are worth waiting for."

"Yeah." Anna lets her fingers curl against Elsa's waist. "Maybe."

They watch an episode together in comfortable silence.

/-/-/-/-/


	8. Chapter 8

_2.6.16_

 _Warning! Do not read this chapter aloud to your grandmother or small children._

 _You have been warned._

 _-Rex_

* * *

 **7.**

"Hello?"

" _Hey, babe_. _What's up?_ "

"Oh, hey! Sorry I missed your call earlier! I was trying to inhale a sandwich before class."

" _Yeah, it's whatever. Are you okay? You sound_ …" Jenny pauses down the line, and Elsa can hear her nails clicking against something in the background, a nervous habit that her friend has always had, and which Elsa has always found calming. " _This is weird, but you sound happy, Elce. Too happy. I dunno. Maybe happy isn't the right word_?"

"Er, well. I...um-"

"- _No, you sound like, excited or nervous or- wait_!" Jenny gasps. " _Are you doing your whole manic thing again? When's the last time you slept_?"

Elsa hums nervously and rubs the back of her neck. "Last night."

" _Don't lie to me. I know you haven't slept well since-_ "

"-I sleep fine, Jen. Honestly."

" _You know it's one am, right_?"

"Yeah, and I'm supposed to be studying for a test. Who's fault is it that I'm here late?"

" _You wouldn't be in bed anyway, Larsen. C'mon_."

"Probably not." Elsa takes a deep breath and taps her pencil against the page of her history textbook. "Anyway, I am happy. It's just nice here. I'm enjoying myself."

" _Well, that's good_." Jenny sounds relieved, even though Elsa knows that she's probably drowning in envy. " _I was kinda worried you'd disappear and I'd never hear from you again_."

Elsa pauses. Is Jenny getting sentimental? Admitting that she would miss her counts as sentimental, right? She glances furtively around her empty corner of the library, where she is definitely not supposed to be talking on the phone. Lowering her head, she pulls up her hood to hide her face and, hopefully, her light blue phone case.

"Of course not," she whispers.

" _Why are we whispering?_ " Jenny whispers back.

"I'm in the library."

" _For fuck's sake, go home, Elsa._ "

Elsa shifts in her chair and gazes forlornly at the spread of papers and books on the table in front of her. "I can't."

" _Why the hell not? You're gonna do shitty on your test if you don't get any fucking sleep_."

"It's just-" Elsa sighs wretchedly and rubs her hand over her face. "I can't concentrate in my dorm right now."

" _Bullshit._ " Jenny snorts, but through the exasperation Elsa can hear a razor's edge of concern." _That's code for 'Elsa can't sleep'_."

Elsa rubs her face again. "Maybe."

" _Definitely_."

Jenny still knows her surprisingly well. It's frustrating and endearing and secretly an overwhelming relief. She falls back in her chair and shuts her eyes against the white glare of overhead fluorescent lighting, admitting finally, that the searing headache hammering against her temples isn't going to go away until she falls into her bed.

But that bed still smells like Anna.

And she just can't quite…

"How about I'll start packing up my stuff if you tell me about your day," Elsa says, interrupting her traitorous, mutinous, hopelessly obsessive thoughts.

" _Okay, yeah_ ," Jenny drawls, taking the bait. " _Let me tell you all about how my fucking step-dick wrecked his brand new truck_."

Elsa picks up the first book and shoves it in her bag, snickering softly as Jenny immediately launches into one of her usual vulgar tirades. A wan, hunched grad student flits past her between the stacks, briefly catching her eye down the aisle. His gaze flicks to the phone and he smiles at her knowingly. Elsa smiles back, because they both know she's getting away with something that the daytime librarian, Mrs. Gempel, would pop a cork over.

" _God!"_ Jenny snarls. " _That man is fucking resource-rich in stupidity! I don't even know why my mom likes him. He's a complete tool._ "

"Love doesn't always make sense," Elsa responds reasonably, sloppily packing her notes into a mostly empty backpack pocket. She's too tired to care.

Jenny pauses mid-tirade. " _What was that, Elce?_ "

Elsa's chest clenches and she licks her lips. "Nothing. He's a tool."

" _Too fucking right_."

She slings her pack over her shoulder and takes the back stairs out onto the cold, icy path around the side of the library building. Jenny complains the whole way home, and Elsa just laughs, backing her up, echoing her disgust. Gary is a waste of oxygen. Gary is a hypocrite. Gary is a violent piece of shit who should be in jail.

Elsa ignores the nagging thoughts in the back of her mind that tell her she's no better.

She changes her pillowcases when she gets home and takes a sleeping pill.

/-/-/-/-/

Unlike the other universities in the area, Arendelle University does not hold an officially sanctioned Oktoberfest event. Instead, there is the deceptively named Charity Week, a raunchy keg-fest beginning exactly seven days before Halloween and ending with a concert and carnival on the quad Halloween night. Anna is bouncing off the walls for days in advance, rushing through the room in a whirlwind to grab clean clothes before whizzing off again, jabbering to Elsa about all the parties and events going on around campus. Elsa is overwhelmed just _listening_ to her roommate's itinerary.

The flyers go up on bulletin boards around campus weeks in advance calling for students to "register their acts and events". It's all kind of a mystery to Elsa. Arendelle is a prestigious institution, and she is part of the comparatively small minority of undergrads who aren't legacy students or at least in some way connected to the school through family. She finds that she is generally out of the loop on Arendelle's word-of-mouth traditions, because even though she did quite a bit of research into the academic rigor and culture of the university back in high school, she didn't spend much time reading into campus events. It wouldn't have mattered much, anyway. A lot of the charity week experience apparently happens outside what one would call school sponsored activities.

She learns from a Sigma Phi Delta sophomore trying to chat her up in the coffee shop (called the Penguin Bar, she now realizes) that Charity Week began innocuously enough as an unsanctioned fraternity event held in the woods just off campus. The senior members sold tickets for beer and donated the proceeds to local charities. There was live music and dancing and, of course, plenty of 'necking'. Everything went off without a hitch until the 70s, when two freshman girls passed out some ways from the bonfire and died of exposure. When the university intervened and tried to ban it, the Charity Day celebration went underground and more kids ended up in the hospital.

"They had no choice but to make an official event so they could keep an eye on things," he tells her smugly, leaning a bit too presumptuously over the counter, "and since then it has expanded into a debaucherous, Bacchanalian, Halloween-themed shit show." He waves his arm around at the coffee shop packed with excited students. "There's costumes, keg-stand contests, dance parties, day-keggers, flip cup competitions, and zombie tag."

Well, okay then.

Charity Week kicks off on a Wednesday this year, and all academic activity immediately grinds to a screeching halt. Elsa pays ten bucks at a booth outside the cafeteria for a blue, long-sleeved shirt with a picture of a penguin drinking a stein of beer and the words "CHARITY WEEK 2015" printed on the front.

"This shirt is your ticket to events this week," the booth attendant tells her.

She pulls it on over her dress and gets a round of high fives from three drunk soccer players in her next class. The TA sways on his feet and rambles rather unsteadily through their biology lecture.

"The Delta Chis are hosting an anything-but-pants party!" Anna squeals later that night, flying through the door. She grabs Elsa by the shoulders and shakes her vigorously. "I need to find something to wear that isn't pants!"

It takes ten minutes for Elsa to convince her roommate, who is shivering in a pair of ripped stockings, cowboy boots, and a long, belted Penguins Lacrosse sweater that she isn't up for it, and when Elsa wakes up the next morning with a tweaked neck she's convinced that Anna's vigorous shaking pulled a muscle.

Like Anna, Sam nearly works herself into a frenzy trying to describe the epicness of the various Charity Week parties.

"They turn a blind eye to most the craziness," she says, grinning across the table over breakfast Thursday morning. "The Greek houses all compete to raise the most money, so public intoxication is, like, a non issue."

This doesn't come as a surprise to Elsa. From what she can tell, _anything_ and _everything_ that will sell tickets for charity, short of gratuitous nudity and controlled narcotics, has gotten the Office of Student Life's rubber stamp of approval. No one seems to be particularly interested in showing up to class sober, including the professors, who have been meeting between classes to drink champagne on the quad next to the apparently semi-permanent dj booth. Meanwhile, in the center of the quad, next to the Founder's Fountain, the seniors have erected a 'jail' constructed crudely from an old shipping container. They've retrofitted both sides with metal bars, courtesy of the metal workers in the sculpture building, and as is tradition, are now running a nice racket charging students five dollars to have people arrested. The boys rugby squad has apparently volunteered to act as bailiffs, chasing hapless targets down in jerseys, short shorts, and spandex between classes, before hoisting them up and hauling them back to the prison amidst raucous cheers from the student body and champagne-soaked professors.

Elsa's been carrying the five dollars bond money in her pocket all week just in case.

As if campus life isn't already frenetic enough with all the jailbreaks, loud music, and drunk professors, there are also gangs of upperclassmen wandering around in costume peddling various services for hire. So far she's seen a boombox-toting dirty-dancing dinosaur flash mob, a bunch of sorority girls with plastic lightsabers wearing giant sunglasses and pink onesies, a choir troupe in Soviet Red Army drag claiming to sing proletariat-approved drinking songs from the Motherland, a juggling unicycle act dressed head to toe in tinfoil, a full pantheon of gender-bent Marvel superhero characters with props, and even a comparatively normal traveling drum circle. In addition to this, the official Charity Week game of zombie tag is already underway, and a good quarter of the student body is running around campus in full zombie makeup at all times, hunting down 'survivors' armed with nerf guns and orange bandanas. (Elsa has been mistakenly shot point blank in the face once already, and she's sort of over it.)

It's fantastically overwhelming, and after Sam subjects her to a dirty dancing session with the dinosaurs and a dozen group selfies with the gender-bent comic book heroes, she retreats to the library, where Mrs. Gempel, fortunately, has banned all alcohol, nerf guns, and zombies.

"So, basically she's banned all fun," Sam complains, waving Elsa off with disgust as she goes sprinting across the quad into a flash mob of zombies dancing to 'Thriller' by the DJ's booth.

Whatever. Elsa needs the quiet.

On Friday, she is staring out the window of a classroom in Grant, overlooking the nearly empty walkway three stories below, when all of a sudden a single girl wearing an orange bandana over her face sprints full speed across the path and swan dives through the icy bushes on the other side. It's so odd and unexpected that Elsa perks up and leans over to try and get a glimpse of where she's gone. Just at that moment, three boys in zombie makeup and shredded clothes go tearing across the path behind her, shouting, moaning, and waving incoherently.

She's still laughing as she tries to describe the scene to Sam and her roommate, Mari, over lunch an hour later.

"And then she just dove!" Elsa demonstrates enthusiastically with her arms. "The whole thing was totally surreal. I felt like I was watching tv."

Sam laughs easily, pushing her unruly brown hair out of her face. Mari shakes her head, swiping through texts in a giant smartphone that makes her tiny hands look even smaller. Her nails are perfectly manicured, and Elsa wonders where she finds the time. Mari is always dressed within an inch of her life. She's too pulled together to be pre-med. It's not right.

"You need a haircut, S," Mari says in an exasperated monotone, sparing her unscrupulous roommate a rare glance.

"I know, I know." Sam shrugs her off with a disarming smile. "Hey speaking of zombies, Elce, have you seen Anna? I saw her running around with an orange bandana yesterday."

"Not since Wednesday night. Something about a no-pants party?"

Tapping away furiously on her phone, Mari snorts. "Oh, god, yeah. She and her boyfriend were completely shit-faced. He was like, dry humping her in middle of the room, or something. Hopefully she didn't drunkenly choke on his dick and suffocate."

Elsa accidentally inhales too much soda and coughs. Sam makes a face and sympathetically wallops her on the back.

"Don't die, Elsa."

Across the table, Mari glances up from her phone and scrutinizes Elsa curiously for a moment. "Having you ever caught them fucking?" she asks wickedly.

Elsa isn't sure it's possible for her to turn a brighter shade of red. She reaches for a napkin and wipes her watering eyes, buying herself a few extra seconds. Fortunately, Sam saves the day.

"Anna's never home. She's always at the frat house."

"Gross." Mari's laugh is a little caustic. "I've seen their showers, and can I just say, ew?"

"I know, right?" Sam makes a gagging sound.

"He must have a really nice dick, is all I can say," Mari remarks casually, and Elsa slumps over the table.

Her beautiful, horrible, super-top secret memory of Anna bent over, bare-legged in nothing but a lacey black thong is now tainted by the image of Hans sweating and grunting and erratically thrusting into her from behind and Elsa wants to puke. Maybe if she's lucky, the floor will swallow her up instead.

She forces down some more soda and tries to clear her mind, but she can't quite do it. Sam and Mari leave her after lunch because she's done with the conversation. She's done with them and she's done with talking.

She walks past more feuding zombies and survivors on her way back to the dorms, but her lips don't even quirk. The smile doesn't come back. Elsa kicks at some ice on the sidewalk. It's jagged, brittle, and cracked, a perfect visual representation of everything that she feels inside. It's everything that Anna makes her feel. She kicks it harder, obliterates it, stands there for an extra moment and digs in with her heel until it's been ground in a fine, snowy powder. She's pissed off at Mari, who she's still not convinced is a good person, despite Sam's insistence otherwise, and she's exasperated with herself. She's always been mentally disciplined. She's always been tough. She knows that she's only that way because her father liked to use his belt when he smoked too much crystal, but it takes a lot not to crack up in a house like hers, so it counts either way. She's hard and she knows it.

But Anna…

Elsa shakes her head and trudges on. She ignores the calls from a snowball fight on the lawn, melting down now into dirty slush, churned up like a cattle yard over the course of the week. It's perfect. The image sticks to her thoughts. She knows that she could take a scalpel and cut herself down the middle, peel herself open like a patient on an operating table, and her insides would look just the same, muddy and slushy and all churned up. Anna does something to her. Anna makes her feel things that she hasn't felt since she held that colt .45 in her hand and squeezed the trigger. It's been nothing but the aching void since then, since the anger ran out of jet fuel and burned itself out, since the tears dried up and the fear evaporated, blowing away like dust in the wind. She's been so empty this past year, empty and anxious, empty and angry. It was only the pain, the keen blade of a knife, that could take the edge off.

Now, there's a new edge with Anna. It gnaws and bites just the same, but it flutters, too, and it excites. It fills her up with helium until she feels like she will float away. She knows that the higher she goes, the harder she will fall. That's the truth she has to face. Bones are brittle. Elsa's control is brittle. She didn't fight her way to college just so some privileged, oblivious, redheaded disaster of a girl could fuck her up.

She's got to get her head on straight.

She's got to stay focused.

/-/-/-/-/

Elsa knows that she retreats when she's stressed. She knows that. It's not news, but this time she's sort of annoyed with herself for it. Charity Week parties are in full swing, and she could be out drinking and living it up with Sam, but she has a troubling propensity for social anxiety and agoraphobia when she's overwhelmed, so instead she's sitting on her bed trying to slog through _Crime and Punishment_ while the sound of loud rap music thumps next door.

Her eyes stray to the closet, where her little box of horrors lies hidden under a pile of junk.

Should she…?

No.

Her leg has only just healed. If she lets it go on this way she won't be able to stop, and she needs to be able to stop. She knows the signs of addiction like she knows her own name: increased tolerance, symptoms of withdrawal, heightened anxiety between use, intrusive thoughts about using.

Elsa glares down at her twitching fingers. Traitors. The book in her lap isn't helping tonight either. She's trying to keep her attention focused on something productive but her thoughts are elsewhere, and Raskolnikov has been whining incessantly for two chapters. He reminds her so much of herself sometimes ( _ubermensch_ thing aside). It's like looking in a mirror. She flips the page and rolls her eyes as he ruminates again at length on the guilt that's eating him up from the inside out. That's what happens when you kill a person in cold blood. What did he expect?

Elsa huffs. It's really starting to get on her nerves.

She's only just decided to ditch her book and pull out the box for a quick little fix, a little something to calm her thoughts, when the telltale click of a keycard sliding into the lock outside catches her attention.

It's Anna, of course, loud and sloppy drunk. Elsa's annoyed, but surprised to see her at all, figuring that it would be days before the redhead extracted herself from festivities at the Delta Chi house. Anna leans too heavily on the handle as the door swings in and crashes with it into the wall. Her cheeks are red, and her loose hair is mussed, cascading like fire over the white parka that hangs open from her shoulders. Beneath it, her green dress is rumpled in a few suspect locations. There's an orange bandana tied loosely around her neck and smudges of black and grey stage makeup on one cheek, smeared down the side of her neck and onto her clothes. Purple hickeys and fading crimson bite marks litter her collar bone, left behind by a mouth that Elsa refuses to think about.

God, her roommate's a total hot mess.

Anna's fingers peel away from the metal handle, the only thing helping her maintain her balance, and the door slams shut.

"Elsaaaaa!" She sighs boisterously, tripping over her own boots. "Boys are sooo dumb!"

As she says this, she rips her bag from around her torso and flings it across the room. Papers spill out and flutter to the ground like autumn leaves, and Anna just sighs at the sight like she's staring at an elegant flock of snow white swans.

"Keep it down!" Elsa hisses, glancing at the door. "You're gonna wake up the RA."

"But it's Friday!" Anna laughs brightly and spins around on the spot like a clumsy ballerina, dress fanning out around her thighs. "And it's Charity Week! He's out partying with everyone else!"

"Not if he's on duty tonight."

"Why are you even home, Elsa?" Anna stumbles towards her, boots slipping on some of the detritus that has fallen out of her bag. "Shouldn't you be making out with hot boys somewhere?" She sighs and slumps against the closet door. "Or hot girls." She smiles dreamily. "I don't judge."

Elsa flushes as more wicked, traitorous images flood her mind.

"Oh, your cheeks are red!" Anna laughs, and Elsa grinds her teeth. "Did I embarrass you? Awww."

"How much did you drink?" Elsa asks curtly, tossing her book aside and rising from the bed. "You're a wreck."

"Fuck you," Anna says petulantly, flicking her wrist, "I'm a beautiful disaster!"

She stumbles around the room for a moment, shrugging off her coat and tossing it in the general direction of the closet. Elsa tries not to be annoyed that she is doomed to live in a perpetual junk yard, it's not a good use of her energy, but her hands curl into fists anyway. This is not how she had planned to spend her evening, babysitting a drunk roommate covered in zombie paint and stale beer and the evidence of recent sexual trysts with Hans. Her heartbeat starts to pick up, and she swallows against a suddenly dry throat.

Anna finds her bag, upturned in a heap, and starts to rummage through it. She's muttering incoherently to herself, and Elsa just watches, annoyed and fascinated, frozen in the middle of the room. There are more bite marks on Anna's shoulders, plainly visible now that her coat has been shucked, and what could maybe be scratch marks. Elsa isn't sure. Her roommate looks really beat up. She notes the indentation of bruises on Anna's thighs and nearly stumbles when a bout of sudden dizziness slams into her.

"Aha!" Anna holds a bottle of tequila aloft, triumphant. Her teal eyes burn with pride and glee, fierce as they meet Elsa's. "Wanna drink, sexy roommate?"

Elsa quivers. "I think you've had enough."

Anna stands up with surprising grace and advances on her. "C'mon, Elsa. Have a drink with me."

"Anna, stop-"

"-You need to loosen up." Anna rolls her shoulders, and slinks closer, right up into Elsa's face, until Elsa can feel hot breath rustling the hair that's fallen loose from her braid. "You're so uptight all the time." Anna snorts and sways as she reaches to uncap the bottle. "Don't you ever jus' wanna…" She wraps her lips around the neck of the bottle and slugs back a quick, hard swallow, pulling away moments later with a wet pop and a delighted, almost feral grimace. "Don't you ever jus' wanna chill out?"

Elsa feels the blood rushing to the surface of her skin before she notices that she's staring at Anna's lips, and by then it's too late to pretend that she isn't affected. Her heartbeat is a veritable thunderstorm in her ears, deafening, terrifying, powerful. Her fingers are throbbing. Her lips are swelling. Her flushed skin is buzzing, painfully, and she aches in places that make her want to whimper and collapse at Anna's feet. It's more than she can process. It's more than she can handle. She is _furious_. She is _shaking_. She has never experienced such an overpowering hunger before, and she isn't even sure what she wants. All she knows is the way that Anna's mouth, glistening with alcohol and warm saliva, make her lust for more.

It wakes something dark inside her.

Elsa reaches out and snatches the bottle, gripping Anna's wrist firmly, hard enough to bruise, as she slides it from her hand.

"I think you've had enough."

Anna shivers. "Yes, ma'am."

Something in Elsa responds, and it's like magnets in her bones, pulling her closer. Elsa grasps at the last vestiges of her self control. She might as well be grasping at straws, because she knows she won't be able to get a firm grip. The bottle is cold and hard and real in her fist. It's unflinching, unyielding. It's distracting. Elsa puts the bottle to her lips and tips her head back, taking three, ambitious swallows of the pale, amber liquor. Her eyes, nose, and throat burn. Her tongue tingles. Her chest warms as the tequila flows south, spreading anesthetizing fire into the organs beneath her ribcage. It'll soon reach her head, she knows, but it's okay. The sharpest edges are dulled now.

"Holy shit…" Anna murmurs, and now Elsa remembers her.

Her hand finds her forehead, hot and flushed. Her fingers curl into her messy bangs.

"That was freaking _hot_."

Anna reaches up to touch her lips, sticky fingertips brushing across swollen skin.

It's finally too much.

Elsa snaps. There's no other word for it. The fuse has burned down and it feels like a stick of dynamite is exploding in her head. She releases Anna's wrist and shoves it away from her so sharply that the other girl gasps.

"Get the fuck off of me, you-" Elsa cuts herself off before she can say something awful and turns her back, shoulders shaking, hands balled into tight fists.

Seconds pass in excruciating silence, and she's sure that Anna is about to storm out, yell at her, cuss her out and call her bitch, when, suddenly, a low, gravelly voice speaks up into the gulf between them.

"Me what?"

The hair on Elsa's neck stands on end. Anna's tone, it almost sounds as if…

She turns around to face her roommate, expression baleful and tight, but what she sees causes her eyes to widen, and her jaw to drop.

Anna's face is flushed so red that the freckles on her cheeks have almost disappeared. Her breathing is shallow and labored, chest rising and falling swiftly. Elsa's eyes stayed fixed on her bruised collarbone for a second too long. When she remembers, guiltily, to raise them, she realizes with a shock that her roommate's eyes are completely dilated, bright blue irises swallowed up by black pupils. She looks….

Aroused...

Wait.

"Stupid what?" Anna prods again, taking a hesitant step forward.

Elsa shakes her head stiffly.

"No, tell me. What were you gonna say?"

"Anna, no. Just lea-"

"Say it," Anna implores her.

Her voice is tight and strained. The tip of a pink tongue flicks across her lips and disappears again. Elsa watches it like a cat watching a mouse. She can't think to stop herself. Her thoughts empty like liquid spilling from a jug onto the ground.

The redhead takes another daring step forward, and her voice drops to a whisper. "Elsa, say it."

Elsa swallows hard. A spell has settled over them both. The air in the room is thick and viscous, and it's taking half her concentration just to breathe. Her extremities throb as adrenaline floods her bloodstream, and she's becoming dizzier trying to restrain herself. New urges swim to the surface, shouting their demands, tugging whatever strings they control, willing her to obey. Elsa tells herself not to obey. She commands her body to stand down, but she can feel the heat scorching her heaving chest. She can feel the hot blood throbbing in her face, her pelvis, her legs. She recognizes the fire for what it is, but it's different. It doesn't scald or destroy, it burns like a fever, and urges, it thirsts. She cannot find the cold anger that she has clung to for so long. It slips through her fingers like a greased rope each time she grasps for it.

Elsa knows that she is losing it.

She knows that she is going to regret what she says next.

Her lip trembles, and the words escape as a rough whisper. "You _stupid slut_."

The effect on Anna is instantaneous. She stumbles a bit and bites her lip, eyes rolling back into her head. Her fingers clutch at the edges of her dress, and the fiery blush spreads to every bit of skin in sight, until all her body seems to glow.

"Say it again," she murmurs, "please."

Elsa's face twitches. Her nerve endings buzz like she's stuck her finger in an electrical socket. Her mouth clicks open and shut a few times. The anger surges, but it's different. It's keen and greedy. It's aggressive. It's possessive.

"Don't touch me, you stupid _slut_."

Her roommate shivers violently all over, and suddenly, like a lightning bolt of clarity from the heavens, Elsa understands.

"You...you like this," she whispers.

Anna hangs her head. It's as good as any confirmation she could give.

Elsa stares at her in utter shock. She doesn't know how to process this information. She's not sure if she _should_ process this information. Reluctant gears turn in her head anyway.

"You're a masochist?" She glances furtively at the door, like someone is going to hear them from the hall.

"No, that's you," the redhead replies dryly, unsteadily, and it's rather alarming how quickly she's sobered up.

Elsa instinctively crosses her arms, tucking them against her sides. "How did you know?" She hates how vulnerable she sounds.

"I've seen them." Anna gives her a small, sad smile. "The scars on your-"

"-Right." Elsa cuts her off, clenches her jaw, and turns away.

She backs up and drops onto her bed, puts her head into her hands. She has to admit that there is part of her that has always hoped, no, _yearned_ that someone might notice, notice and speak up. She knows that she's been ruining herself all this time, slowly, deliberately, methodically. She's the monster. The monster is herself. She's trying to hurt herself. She's trying to…

But someone's noticed now, so shouldn't she be happy? Shouldn't she be relieved? She's not either. She's ashamed, and pissed off. Her fingers itch for something sharp.

The mattress dips beside her as Anna sits down. Elsa instinctively shifts away from her, but her roommate doesn't seem to take offense.

"I don't know what I am," Anna says, slowly, "but I like being dominated. I like rough sex."

Elsa tenses. "Why are you telling me this?" she asks, mumbling through her hands.

Anna doesn't respond.

"I don't know what you want me to say." Elsa mumbles after a beat. "That's...messed up."

"So's cutting yourself," Anna replies drily.

Rage flares white hot behind her eyes and suddenly she can't _breathe_ she's so angry. Anna doesn't _understand_. The stupid bitch doesn't understand a fucking thing. Raised with a silver spoon in her mouth, flouncing around campus like some kind of ridiculous, ginger Barbie.

Anna's breath hitches, and Elsa realizes that she's actually glaring at her. The blush of arousal returns to her roommate's freckled cheeks and her rage flares again, cracking inside her like a whip.

When she strikes Anna hard across the face. It stuns them both.

"Don't look at me like that!" Elsa growls, instantly ashamed.

With a red, smarting welt on her cheek, Anna looks like she's struggling to breathe as she ducks her head and mutters a very dutiful, "yes, ma'am."

"Stop calling me _ma'am_!"

"Should I call you something else?" Anna asks, confused.

Elsa can feel herself growing more flustered and agitated by the second. "Quit fucking with me! This isn't a game!"

"Definitely not a game," Anna parrots slowly, but her eyes are fixed on the blonde's lips. " _Definitely_ not."

"Stop it! Serious-"

"-Hit me again," her roommate says earnestly. "Please?"

Elsa's head spins. The world is falling away under her feet. This isn't happening. There is no way this is happening to her. She feels like a character in a reality prank show. In fact, she half expects a camera crew to jump out of her closet the second she agrees.

Wait, agrees? Who said she was going to agree?

Anna leans closer wearing an expression that looks something like a sultry mixture of lust and hope. It makes Elsa's stomach do (not entirely unpleasant) flips.

"Pretty please with a cherry on top? I promise I won't tell anyone."

The redhead bats her eyelashes flirtatiously, and there's a soft slur in her words reminding Elsa that she's drunk, that she's covered in bruises and marks, that Elsa still has a liquor bottle clenched tight in her fist. She lets it drop to the floor.

Anna moves to grab it and Elsa blocks her.

"Oh, come on! Elsa, please!"

"If you drink anymore you're gonna pass out."

"You're being-" Anna's voice catches, and she hiccups. "You're being dramatic."

"Yeah, no."

Anna huffs, and scoots closer. She's almost begging now, and Elsa kind of likes it, being supplicated. It's kind of heady. It's almost like having real control.

"It's _my_ tequila."

"You're _underage_."

Anna whines, and Elsa wants to kick herself in the face for finding it so attractive. "So?"

"So, you could get arrested for having this."

Anna makes a quick swipe for it, and Elsa slaps her open palm against Anna's forehead in her haste to push her away. When her roommate's breath quickens again she realizes what she's accidentally done.

"Jesus, _stop_!"

Anna's laugh is thick and syrupy. "Do you hate it when I push your buttons, like this?"

 _No_.

Elsa's throat bobs.

Anna watches the tiny motion hungrily, blue eyes flicking up to catch her own. "You know how to make me stop."

"What?"

She nods and points at the angry welt on her cheek. "Hair pulling and name calling would also be good, but I'll take what I can get."

Anna leans in and Elsa realizes that the redhead's nose is almost touching hers, that her fingers have curled into Elsa's shirt without her noticing. Anna sighs, and Elsa's heart flutters. Her body prickles. A thousand tiny goosebumps peak on her alabaster skin. Anna is so close that she can smell her, and Elsa's knees weaken. She would be leaning against a wall, stumbling for something to steady herself against, if she weren't already sitting down. The tangy scent of tequila mixes flawlessly with Anna's orange ginger body wash and the saline musk of sweat. Elsa breathes it in and tries to hang on.

Then Anna's fingers find her neck and it's too late to go back.

"Okay," she breathes.

"Really?" Anna grins.

"Shut up," Elsa grumbles. "Let's get this over with before I think better of it."

But her roommate has other ideas. She's already climbing up off the bed, running her fingers haphazardly through her fiery red hair, combing out some of the more obvious tangles. It falls in wavy curtains around her bare, freckled shoulders.

"What are you doing?"

"You'll see," Anna singsongs.

Elsa's heart skips a beat as she comes around to face her, and slowly, carefully, kneels down onto the carpet at her feet.

"What are y-"

"-Shh." Anna's sucks her bottom lip between her teeth and pushes Elsa's knees apart, settling a bit unsteadily between them. She turns her face up expectantly. "Okay," she purrs, "ready when you are."

It's wrong. Anna is really, really drunk and Elsa knows. She _knows_. But her insides are twisting and turning, and there is something powerful expanding in her chest, threatening to split her open. She is sick with nerves. She is flushed with anger. She reeling and out of control, and starting to panic, but then Anna puts her hand on her knee and lets her fingers slide along the rough denim, gathering sparks as they climb higher and higher, until they're brushing her pelvis. Elsa's mouth falls open, and blood pounds in her ears, and her skin prickles, and Anna's fingers are doing things to her body that she doesn't have the vocabulary to describe.

"Make me stop," Anna goads wickedly, eyeing the bob in Elsa's throat. Her fingers slide higher until they're curling into the waistband of Elsa's jeans. "Make me stop before I do something _crazy_." She licks her lips, but then hesitates as comprehension slowly dawns on her face. "Or, wait… Elsa, do you actually _want_ this?"

Elsa hits her again, and Anna takes it with grace, loose tendrils of red hair whipping around her face as she jerks to the side. She stays perfectly still for a moment. A small, pink tongue darts out to moisten her lips, and Anna's eyes slide shut. Her narrow chest is heaving.

Elsa flexes her hand and feels the sting in her fingers. Her mind is full of confused, disconnected thoughts.

"Again?" Anna breathes in. "C'mon, Elsa. Don't punk out now."

Her teal eyes flick open and snare Elsa's, and suddenly the blonde knows exactly how Odysseus must have felt, tied to the mast, straining against his bonds as the sirens sang to him. She might be a virgin, but she's not naive. She knows seduction when she sees it, and Anna's voice is making the spot between her legs pound.

It's like she's leaking.

"Elsa?" Anna whispers. "Please, Elsa-"

Elsa strikes her again, and this time Anna gasps and bites her lip to stifle the loud moan that threatens to escape. It makes Elsa's hair stand on end. She doesn't wait this time. She can see the request forming on Anna's lips and she absolutely cannot stand to hear her voice again so soon. There's no telling what it'll make her do.

She slaps Anna harder, and a breathy whimper passes her lips. A light sheen of sweat is forming on her brow, and some of her hair is sticking.

Oh, god.

Elsa is absolutely transfixed. What the hell is this? What the hell is she doing?

Anna curls her fingers harder into Elsa's waistband, laughing softly, darkly, as she alights upon the metal button and flicks it open. She wrenches the denim fabric aside so she can tear at the zipper and drags it down. The sound is nearly deafening in their tiny room, and Elsa is breathing so fast. She is so lightheaded. She's going to pass out.

"Let me say thank you," Anna slurs, pressing her nose into Elsa's crotch, and oh jesus christ this is so wrong and she needs to tell her to stop, but-

" _Ahhh_ ," Elsa's head falls back, and Anna breathes in, digging her nails harder into the small of Elsa's back.

"Does that feel good?"

"I- _fuuuck_."

Anna laughs and then she's pushing Elsa back with a hand on her chest, and tugging at her hips. Elsa only gasps again as her jeans slide off her thighs and the cold air hits her flushed skin. She shivers and sits up as Anna is struggling with the fabric bunched around her shins.

"What are we doing?" she asks, rhetorically, because, of course, she knows exactly what they're doing, and she can't think about anything else.

She rushes to help Anna kick off her jeans.

"Fuck, you're so _beautiful_ , Elsa." Anna's hands slide along her liberated calves, and everything beneath them burns like the brightest wildfires in the west.

Anna creeps up on her haunches, slinky and sweaty and flushed, pausing to press light kisses to the wounds at Elsa's thighs, then surges forward to snare the hem of Elsa's underwear between her teeth. She tugs, ravenous, forceful, and Elsa's breath hitches, her will to resist further unraveling. Anna's fingers creep under the flimsy, cotton fabric, ready to pull, and Elsa just lifts her hips.

Sharp teeth clamp down on her thigh, and Elsa jerks, groaning.

This pain is different.

This pain feels good.

Anna licks and soothes with her fingers, with her mouth. She sucks until the blood under Elsa's skin wells to the surface and blooms dark red; mottled and maroon like red wine. She leaves marks that sting, and Elsa makes no move to stop her. She's won't deny herself this.

She can't.

When Anna's silky lips find her core, dripping and aching, they moan together in unison. It's filthy and sloppy and the vibrations from Anna's mouth make her hips jump off the bed. Elsa's so keyed up. Her muscles are so tight. It feels incredible, like nothing she's ever had. Her eyes roll back into her head, and her fingers tangle in Anna's hair. It's everything she can do to hold herself upright, back arching as a curious tongue swirls around her entrance. She suddenly feels so _empty_. There's nothing she wants more in the world than to be _filled_. Her hips buck unconsciously as Anna drags her tongue up and flicks, and then there are new sounds falling from her mouth, breathy, needy, wanton, trembling sounds. Elsa squeezes her eyes shut, tries to focus on her breathing, on Anna's soft, exploratory strokes.

"You taste _good_ ," Anna murmurs, lips trapping, sucking, tugging until Elsa groans wretchedly. "Fuck. I knew it. I knew you would."

Elsa trembles, fingers clinging tighter to the wild, red tendrils of Anna's hair.

Anna inserts a long, slender finger, thrusting in slowly until she's knuckle deep, and Elsa falls apart. It hurts, but it feels so good, like working a knot out of an aching muscle. She can't catch her breath again. Her hips start to move and she's not even sure what she's doing, but it's amazing. Her head is full of lightning and sparks.

" _Ungh_ ," she moans. "Fuck."

And Anna adds a second finger.

Oh.

That's…

Whoa.

Her orgasm hits like a bomb and it wrecks everything. It blows everything apart. Elsa is devastated. She is obliterated. She feels so much that she fills to the brim and overflows, crying out raggedly into Anna's hair like she's dying. It feels like dying, doubled over on the bed, thighs clenched around Anna's ears, hooked around Anna's shoulders. Anna's lips are wrapped tight around Elsa's clit, fingers pumping gently to coax her down, and Elsa _can't_ anymore, but it feels so amazing that she never wants to stop. Please, god, don't let it stop. Her cries turn to open-mouthed gasps. Her muscles spasm and twitch.

Jesus fuck.

What the ever living fuck was that?

Is it supposed to feel like that? That _good_?

Anna laughs, breathy and husky, like molasses dripping off a hot knife. "I like how you sound." She presses a searing kiss against Elsa's inner thigh and wipes her mouth. "You sound amazing."

Elsa opens her mouth to reply, something that will probably be mostly incoherent, but a sharp knock at the door startles them both. Elsa nearly kicks Anna in the head in her haste to pull away. Anna extracts her fingers too fast and it stings. Elsa hisses through her teeth. The redhead shoots her an apologetic look.

"Hey!" A voice carries through the door, followed by another swift knock. "It's Kristoff! I heard yelling! You guys okay?"

"Shit," Elsa hisses, glancing in a panic down at her sweaty, naked legs.

"Bathroom," Anna whispers. "Hurry. I'll talk to him."

"You're drunk!"

Anna scoffs. "This ain't my first rodeo, partner." She nods at the bathroom door. "Go."

Kristoff starts to knock at the door more insistently, and this time Elsa doesn't question it. She rises from the bed and sprints across the room, taking care to close the bathroom door softly behind her. Breathing hard, she shrinks down to the floor and presses her ear up against the wood, listening carefully to the conversation outside.

"What were you doing?"

"I slipped and fell-" Elsa can hear her roommate laughing nervously. "It's sort of a mess in here, so-"

"-Be more careful."

"Okay, sorry, I-"

"-Are you sure you're okay?" Kristoff sounds suspicious. "You looked flushed."

Elsa is filled with sudden panic as she remembers the tequila bottle, hastily capped and tipped on its side next to the bed. Would Anna even remember to move it?

"Yeah, I was, um…" Anna pauses. "Okay, so I was at a Charity Week event at the Chi Omega house."

"You boyfriend is a Chi Omega, right? Hans or something-"

"-Yeah, Hans! We were dancing and stuff."

"Is he here?"

"No, um-"

"-Who's in the bathroom?"

"Oh! That's just Elsa. She's getting in the shower."

A short pause follows, then, "Hey, Elsa! Is that you?"

Elsa swallows the lump in her throat and leans closer to the door. "Who is it?"

There's another short pause, and then, finally, Kristoff seems satisfied, because he bids Anna goodnight with a parting warning about noise violations and the door clicks shut. Elsa takes a deep breath. She turns and lets her back press up against the door.

That was way too close.

/-/-/-/-/

She can't face Anna again and she can't stop shaking so she strips down and takes a hot shower. Her fingers quiver as she unties her braid and combs out her hair. Dark bruises are forming on her thighs and she knows that she'll have hickies there tomorrow. She may as well have burned herself again because the marks feel shameful, indelible.

The water scalds her, but the bruises don't wash off. She scrubs until her skin burns, even though she can't get under the surface where the real fire still rages.

She is so, incredibly, unbelievably screwed.

There is no scenario where this ends well. None. Maybe she's not the most optimistic person ever, but Elsa is pragmatic. She's considered every scenario she can possibly think of in twenty minutes and let them play out in her head. Best case? Anna goes through a messy breakup with Hans and rides off into the sunset with Elsa on a white stallion. Except, wait. Does she want that? Is that _really_ what she wants? Elsa isn't so sure. Anna is attractive, but she's mysterious, she's chaotic, she's a bull in a china shop, and Elsa's life is definitely a china shop right now. Anna is a force of nature with no boundaries and no will to temper herself. How many other kinks is she hiding? Does she always cheat when she's drunk? Did those other scratches even come from Hans? Elsa has a million questions, like what does any of this mean to Anna? Does it mean nothing? Because Elsa's not quite sure she can handle that.

Which, speaking of, is Elsa even a lesbian? God, who knows. It's not like she's spent a bunch of time fantasizing about women.

And then there are her secrets, the one's she's kept so close to her chest, because here, in the little town of Arendelle, a college town that is more students than full-time residents, Elsa has no history. Anna doesn't know her crimes. She doesn't know that Elsa has taken a life.

Elsa dries herself off in a daze. Everything is blurry around the edges. Everything is a little bit stop motion. She leaves the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her torso, shivering again, uncertain of what she'll find, but as soon as she steps out she realizes that she shouldn't have worried.

The room is empty. The tequila is gone.

Anna's papers are still scattered everywhere.

Elsa crumples onto the floor and cries.

She feels scattered everywhere, too.

/-/-/-/-/

* * *

 _A/N: So, how about them apples?_


	9. Chapter 9

_3.1.16_

 _The aftermath is here, everyone! Finally..._

 _From now on I'm just going to say that every chapter is rated a strong M. I should also caution you that there will be triggers for violence, and possibly abuse as well. You've probably all guessed this already based on the subject matter of this story, but please be advised going forward._

 _Thanks,_

 _-Rex_

* * *

8.

She spends the weekend in the library on her computer.

Charity Week continues to rage all around her, though, by Sunday, the first effects of prolonged hangovers begin to take effect and the campus is eerily quiet until almost five in the evening.

If Anna returns to the room, Elsa doesn't know. She pours through wikipedia articles, forums, blogs, and even a couple of porn sites, focusing intently for small intervals of time before remembering her location, and glancing around furtively to check for wandering eyes.

She doesn't eat. She barely sleeps.

She learns, but she doesn't really find any answers.

/-/-/-/-/

Monday morning arrives like a brick to the face. Samantha drops her stuff down on the desk, and Elsa jumps violently, clutching at her chest.

"Holy shit..." She breathes out and releases the front of her sweater. "You scared me."

"Sup, Elsa. You're looking, um...bedraggled? Is that the word?"

"Yeah, that's the word." Elsa lets her head drop onto the desk.

Sam sighs noisily. "What's up, chica? You look like shit."

"Thanks," Elsa mutters.

"Seriously."

Elsa rolls her eyes and sits up, brushing her hair out of her face. "Seriously, thanks."

Sam's eyes widen. "Oh, hey, your hair is down. Why is your hair down?"

Elsa mumbles something into her hands.

"What?"

"I said, Anna told me she likes it."

"Anna your roommate?"

"Yeah."

Sam's brows go up. "The one you hate?"

"I don't hate her," Elsa frowns, tugs the cuffs of her sweater over her knuckles, "she's just..."

"Messy, drunk, obsessed with her boyfriend-"

"-Yeah, yeah. Jeez, shh." Elsa glances around surreptitiously. "She might have friends in this class."

"The way you talk about her, I'm surprised she has time for anything other than banging Ha-"

"Will you shut up!" Elsa slaps her hand over Sam's mouth. "Sit the hell down, and stop being so loud."

"Okay, jeez, sorry." Sam takes her seat, eyeing Elsa suspiciously as she opens her notebook. "Why are you taking your hated roommate's advice?" Sam looks her over carefully. "And why does it look like you haven't slept all weekend?"

Elsa groans. "Sam, can we not?"

"Um, no, you don't get to do that." Sam swivels to face her. "If I have to sit and listen to you bitch about Anna at lunch every week, then you get to tell me what's wrong."

"Nothing."

"Lies," Sam sing-songs, "traitorous lies!"

"Oh my god."

"Are you gonna tell me? Because otherwise I'm gonna tell you all about Mari's gratuitous public make-out grope fest with her biology TA on Saturday-"

"-Okay!" Elsa hangs her head, and sniffs. "Okay, okay, uncle. Uncle. Just, later, please? Not in class?"

Sam's expression softens. She hooks her long sleeved henley over her thumb and leans forward to wipe a smudge of mascara from Elsa's face.

"One of these days you're gonna figure out that I care about you, Elce."

"We've only known each other for three months." Elsa brushes Sam's hand away and wipes her eyes bruskly.

"So?"

"So, that's not enough time to get to know someone, let alone care about them."

Sam's jaw sets, her mouth hardens into a line, and she looks suddenly quite intimidating. "Says who? The friend police?"

"I-"

"-Can it, Larsen." The brunette pokes her in the chest. "No one gets to tell me who I care about and when I care about them, least of all you!"

Elsa's head drops, and her eyes well up again just as the professor sweeps into the auditorium, five minutes late, barking threats of bodily harm into her cell phone.

"We'll talk after class," Sam murmurs, watching, warily, as Dr. Fisher chucks her bookbag onto the podium with an audible bang. "I think this is going to be an interesting lecture."

/-/-/-/-/

An hour and ten minutes later, Sam drags Elsa by the sleeve of her jacket into her dorm room and deposits her on the bed. The room is hot with the heater blasting, and Elsa's jacket immediately feels suffocating. She unzips the front just as she breaks into a sweat, and looks around at Sam's stuff for lack of anything better to do. She's been over before, but Sam's done a little more decorating since then, there's a purple desk lamp now clipped to the headboard of her bunk, and a few posters on the wall: Muse, Chvrches, a map of Minnesota, the New England Patriots, a fish-eye shot of a girl flying off the end of an icy halfpipe on her snowboard against a jewel blue sky. Nothing else has changed much. The desk is still organized into much the same categories, a messy stack of notebooks and papers, a spilled jar of change, a pile of gum wrappers, reminders written on bent up post-its.

Sam, apparently oblivious to the uncomfortable heat, paws through something in her closet.

"Why are we here?" Elsa asks, growing impatient.

"I'm trying to find my extra cash."

Elsa rolls her shoulders slowly, stretching out the tension. "What for?"

"So, I can buy you lunch…"

"You don't have to do that."

"I know, but I want to... aha!" Sam emerges, smiling, holding a wallet. "Let's go!"

"Why don't you keep your wallet on you?"

"Cuz I'll spend money. I'm not real good with it."

Elsa heaves a noisy sigh, but she tucks the rest of her exasperation away behind a surge of fondness. "Okay. Where are we going?"

"Taco Bell."

Elsa makes a face.

Sam's smile slips. "Would you...rather go somewhere else?"

"Please."

/-/-/-/-/

Elsa has some money. The loans she took out for school (what little wasn't covered by grants and scholarships) included funds to cover her living expenses, and she's worked out a very flexible budget for herself. She tells her friend this as they brave the slushy streets in Sam's little, blue hatchback. Of course, her protests fall on deaf ears. She's found that Sam takes a peculiar pride in her midwestern sense of hospitality, so Elsa doesn't push it. It's not a fight she really wants to win.

The fuzzy dice on Sam's rearview mirror swing violently back and forth when she takes a particularly sharp corner, wheels skidding on a slick patch of pavement as the chassis is jostled up and down. Elsa tries really hard to keep her facial expressions impassive and fails. Sam laughs heartily at her expense.

"I'm a good driver, Elsa. Chill out!"

Elsa just whimpers and clings to the door as they swerve to avoid a pothole

They end up at a Chipotle across town because Elsa doesn't trust the liquid orange cheese at Taco Bell, and Sam already has her heart set on Tex-Mex. The afternoon is bitter cold and soggy, icy streets steaming in the pale, winter sun, melting and cracking and forming brackish puddles in every pothole, divet, and dent. Sam holds the door for her as they pass inside and jump in the winding lunch line. A blast of heat hits Elsa square in the face and she immediately strips off her hat and gloves, stuffing them into the pockets of her blue parka.

"We're supposed to get rain tomorrow," Sam says idly, staring down at her phone.

"Will it freeze?"

"I don't think so. Weather app says it's gonna heat up a for a few days."

"And by heat up they mean low forties, right?"

Sam smirks. "Of course."

"Halloween is gonna be miserable." Elsa scans the menu, pretending she doesn't already know that she's going to get her usual. "I'd rather we got more snow. It's less cold somehow."

"Ditto." Sam tucks her phone away. "I dunno if I'm gonna go out, to be honest. I'm kinda partied out."

Elsa shoots her a skeptical glance.

"I know, right? But seriously, Mari's still retching from Saturday, and I think I'm still dehydrated." Sam pinches the skin on the back of her hand and watches with furrowed brows as the raised, white ridge slowly smoothes itself back into a smooth plain. "Yep. Definitely."

"Wouldn't it be sacrilege to skip the Halloween Bash?"

Sam scoffs and elbows Elsa, a mischievous smile sliding on her lips. "What does a library wraith like yourself care for the parties of mere mortals?"

Elsa blushes lightly and keeps her eyes fixed on the menu. "I don't."

"Did you go to any this weekend?"

"No. Just studied."

At this, Sam seems a little surprised. "Really?" She gives Elsa a quick once over. "That's surprising. You looked like such crap in class this morning that I assumed you were hungover."

Elsa thinks of tequila dribbling down Anna's chin and swallows hard. Her mouth begins to water. If it's a hangover of a different sort that Sam is referring to then maybe, but Elsa shakes her head.

"Alright, well…" Sam musses her hair, growing long now over her ears, and shrugs. "Are you gonna tell me what's actually wrong, then?"

"It's nothing." Elsa cringes at the false levity in her own voice and turns to find Sam wearing an expression of absolutely scathing disbelief. "Er...well. It's not…" Elsa huffs. "I don't know how to talk about it. I don't want to talk about it, I guess."

Sam nods. Elsa wonders if she actually understands this, or if she's just trying to be sympathetic. It's placating either way. They are interrupted by a Chipotle worker as they reach the front of the line, and the next several minutes are spent sliding along the shiny, metal counter, pointing to ingredients for their burrito bowls. Sam, predictably, loads hers up with cheese, guacamole, and sour cream, smiling indulgently at the man behind the counter just so he'll add a little extra. By the time they've taken their seats, Sam has doused her food in hot sauce and dug in with gusto. She smiles across the booth with bulging cheeks.

"I love this place."

Elsa grimaces, and then laughs helplessly. "You look like a chipmunk."

Sam shoves another spoonful of rice and beans into her mouth, reaching for her soda to wash it all down. "Ugh. So good."

"It kinda hits the spot," Elsa admits, digging into her own bowl with considerably less vigor.

"Totally. Best hangover food on the planet." Sam wipes her mouth with a napkin and crumples it up in her fist. "So, spill. What's going on?"

"I don't really want to talk about it."

"Yeah, I know. Tell me anyway."

Elsa looks aghast at this and glares at Sam. "Why should I?"

Sam jabs her fork at Elsa's chest, pausing to swallow another massive bite of food. "You bottle everything up. It's not healthy."

"I'm a private person."

"I think you're just scared of being vulnerable."

"It hasn't worked out so well for me in the past," Elsa snaps, "so excuse me if I'm reticent to share personal details about my life."

Sam leans back in the booth, eyes scrunching tightly. "I'm not the past, Elce. I'm not gonna hurt you, okay? Maybe don't tell me, but tell someone, okay? I've been a little worried about you lately."

"If you knew me at all, you would know that this is normal."

"Fine, well, I'd like to know you better."

Elsa glances up and studies the hard set of Sam's jaw, the odd glassy sheen in her wide brown eyes. "Why?"

"Oh, come on! That's a stupid question." Sam digs angrily into her bowl, wrenching her gaze away. "We're friends and I care about you. Of course I want to get to know you better. What the heck is wrong with you?"

"Nothing! Well…"

"Nothing?"

"Well, I'm just...still not used to people wanting to...be friends with me. I guess."

Sam scoffs. "Who wouldn't want to be friends with you? You're smart and witty and beautiful."

"I-" Elsa huffs. "I wasn't always."

"I definitely don't believe that."

"Anyway, I'm not good at talking about myself. I'm not good at it, okay? I'm sorry."

Sam sighs and runs her fingers through her hair, and Elsa immediately knows that she feels guilty, that she's frustrated, that she's trying to decide how to proceed. Proceeding with caution isn't Sam's strong suit. She's dogged and straightforward. She's earnest and honest and caring, and she drives straight to the heart of any problem she finds. Elsa smiles wanly and wonders when she came to know her friend so well. Her hands quiver under the table, wringing the hem of her pullover. The room is loud and bright, colors bleeding together like the screen on an old TV. She has to close her eyes for a moment, has to steel herself, because Sam deserves an olive branch, even if she doesn't want to give it. If she can trust Jenny, she can learn to trust Sam, too. If she can divulge just a little of this secret, it should be sufficient. There will be more than enough to keep close, to hoard deep in her chest with the greedy flame that Anna has lit there. Sam doesn't have to know it all. She can't, because Elsa's not sure what'll happen when her secret hits the open air, whether the rush of oxygen will feed the flames and drive them higher, whip them into a frenzy, into a blistering fire storm that she can't extinguish. There isn't enough ice around her broken heart to keep her safe.

Whatever this is, she knows it will consume her.

Elsa hesitates. "It's… It's just..." she closes her eyes and knots her fingers together in her lap. "It's Anna."

"God, of course it is." Elsa huffs sharply and glares, but Sam is unrepentant, even smirking a little as she chews. "Don't look at me like that, Elce. She upsets you all the time. It's almost like…" Sam trails off, brows knitting together. "Hm."

Elsa breaks into a nervous sweat and turns her eyes away. Of course, common sense dictates that it shouldn't be obvious to anyone else, but still, she feels branded. She is so aware, so self-conscious, that it feels as if her sins are written plainly on her forehead for all the world to see. She reaches for her soda, fingers curling desperately around cold, damp cardboard, bringing the straw to her mouth to disguise the anxious twitch of her lips as Sam studies her, eyes narrowed in in thought.

"Are you-?" Sam begins to ask, but doesn't get a chance to finish, because just at that moment a blur in a navy blue parka has sailed up to the table and is leaning down to talk to Elsa.

Hans.

"Hey!" Hans smiles his white, unctuous smile and gives Elsa a quick once over. "Nice hair. Finally decided to let it down for change, huh?"

Nervous, sweaty, and dazed, Elsa can only stare for a moment while her brain switches gears. "Um, thanks."

He turns, seeming to notice Sam for the first time. "Hey, I'm Hans."

"Samantha." She fixes him with a knowing smile. "So, you're the boyfriend?"

Hans quirks a brow. "Yes?" He turns to Elsa. "She doesn't mean your boyfriend, right?"

"No, moron." Elsa rolls her eyes. "Everybody knows I don't date guys with bad comb-overs."

Hans' fingers twitch and reach up as if to touch his hair, but then his eyes narrow imperceptibly and he catches himself. He lowers his hand again slowly.

"Nice." His answering smile is a little thin. "I thought it was the sideburns you hated."

"I'm capable of multitasking."

Sam snickers. Something weird flickers across Hans' face, and for a moment he seems privately bemused about something, but he keeps it to himself.

"Cute." He rolls his eyes. "Anyway, this isn't a social call, Elsa. I actually have a favor to ask you."

"A favor?" Elsa frowns. "Why?"

"Relax, I just need you to give a book to Anna. She needs it for her big test on Wednesday."

"Why don't you give it to her yourself? You see her more than I do."

Hans shrugs. "Not lately. It seems like you two are always together."

Confused, Elsa starts to open her mouth, but Sam interrupts. "Yeah, that shouldn't be a problem." She shoots Elsa a giddy look across the table. "Right, Elce?"

"Um," Elsa glances from Sam to Hans, who is now giving both of them a weird look, and then back again. "Yeah? Should be fine."

"Okay, I'll uh," he hitches a thumb over his shoulder, "just go get it from the car." He glances between them one more time. "Be right back."

As soon as Hans is out of earshot, Sam nearly lunges across the table. "OhmygodElsa! Tell me this isn't what it looks like!"

"I have no idea!" Elsa hisses, perplexed. "What does it look like?"

"Well, I know you haven't been hanging out with Anna all the time."

Elsa squirms.

"Wait…" Sam's eyes widen. "Wait wait wait. Have you?"

"Well…" Elsa bites her lip. "Not really. I saw her briefly on Wednesday night, and then….Friday night, but that's it."

"So, she's lying to him!" Sam grins and whirls around to glance at the door. "I knew it!"

"Why do you look so happy about this?"

"Only because it's a freaking scandal!" Food forgotten, Sam reaches into her pocket and whips out her phone. "I have to ask Mari if she knows anything."

"No, wait! Stop, stop!" Elsa reaches out and bats Sam's phone away. "Don't do that!"

"What?" Sam laughs incredulously. "Why not?"

"Because we- We shouldn't get involved."

"Oh, come on, Elce, you don't think it's hilarious that your party animal roommate -the one that you hate- is cheating on her boyfriend and lying about it?"

Elsa clenches her teeth and tries to swallow down the acid creeping up her throat. Her thoughts are flying all over the place. Her emotions are hanging in suspense, not certain yet where to fall.

"Not particularly," she grits out.

"But it's karmic justice! Maybe you can blackmail her into cleaning the room!"

"We don't even know what's going on!" Elsa bats Sam's phone away again. "And besides, I don't hate Anna."

Sam cocks her head to the side. "Since when?"

"Since never! I never hated her."

"I don't understand. You complain about her all the time, and you were just about to tell me that Anna is the reason why you came to class this morning looking like microwaved shit before Hans walked in…" Sam trails off, eyes scrunched up in confusion.

Elsa shushes her as the door opens and Hans returns, striding over wearing an unreadable expression on his face. His expensive boots squeak on the floor as he comes to a stop at their table, and Elsa shoots one last silencing glare at Sam before glancing up at him.

"Here." He hands over a paperback with a picture of a bust of Octavian Augustus on the front. "She texted to let me know she's at library. Just run it over to her when you get back."

"Okay." Elsa accepts the book and looks it over in her hands. "Still not sure why you don't just give it to her yourself, since she's at your place every night."

Sam shoots her an incredulous glare across the table, like she's only seconds away from kicking Elsa under the table. Hans' brow furrows.

"I won't be back on campus until late tonight. I saw you and figured you would see her first." He studies her curiously for a couple of tense seconds before nodding and turning away. "Anyway, thanks, Elsa. I owe you one. See you around."

He takes the bag of food that Elsa hadn't even noticed sitting on the edge of their table, and leaves quickly, the musky scent of his cologne lingering lightly over them. The door to the restaurant slams and a blast of cold air rushes into the room, drawing loud complaints from a group of girls nearby. Elsa shivers.

She feels very, very cold.

Slowly, like a frog reanimating in a Spring thaw, Sam blinks, stuffs her phone back in her pocket, and turns her wide brown eyes to Elsa's. Her jaw works as she chews on her thoughts, and it's unnerving to see Sam so quiet. Elsa goes to set the book aside just so she'll have an excuse to avert her gaze.

"Hm. Well." Sam leans forward and picks up her fork again, resuming the steady demolition of her burrito bowl. "You are definitely acting weird."

Elsa bristles, laughs nervously, caustically. "Aren't I always acting weird?"

Sam hardly misses a beat, eyes fixed on her food. "No."

"Oh. Um."

"What were you going to tell me?"

"About?"

"Anna." Sam shoots her a glance. "C'mon, after that awkwardness? You have to tell me what's going on."

Elsa's stomach churns and she drums her fingernails against the tabletop, thinking longingly of Jenny, how much she would rather have this conversation with her old best friend who has made enough mistakes herself not to find any of Elsa's damning.

Sam can't promise her empathy for this.

What can Elsa give? What can she give to satisfy Sam's curiosity, her dangerous impulse for deeper friendship, for mutual understanding.

Elsa crosses her arms, lets her fingertips dig into her biceps until the muscles burn and her breathing returns to normal again.

Give just enough.

"I already knew Anna was cheating," Elsa says quietly, and that, at least, manages to surprise Sam.

"Wait, you did?" Sam chews slowly. "How?"

"I put two and two together." Elsa shrugs.

"Why'd you cover for her?"

"I didn't cover for her. You covered for her."

"But- wait."

"I didn't realize she's been telling Hans that we were hanging out together." Elsa's eyes sting and she blinks the moisture away. "I would've blown it, probably."

"Can I tell Mari?"

"Let me talk to Anna first." Elsa picks up her fork and stares unenthusiastically at her food. "Mari's a gossip."

"Are you and Anna…" Sam twirls her fork, searching for a word, "friends now?"

Elsa manages a wan smile. "Sure. You could say that."

Sam stares for a second, trying to make sense of it, and when the the bolt of comprehension strikes, when the wrinkles in her brow smooth flat and her eyes widen, Elsa just smiles sadly and resumes eating her food.

"So…what exactly does that mean?"

"Another time, okay?"

Sam, thankfully, decides not to press the issue.

/-/-/-/-/

Life after her first ograsm isn't all too different from life before it, except that Elsa is suddenly, obnoxiously, aware of body parts in a way that she has never been before. In particular, her eyes are drawn to mouths and tongues, whenever Sam, who's made a habit of it, flicks her tongue across her lips while texting, Elsa's heart skips a beat. Of course, her eyes are also drawn to other things, the rounded curves of breasts under fabric, the flow of long hair over collarbones, the indentations of waists and jutting of hips, the subtle curve of muscle that swells at the thighs, the way butts jiggle mid stride. If she notices the bulge between the legs of her male counterparts as well, she tries not to think about it.

It kills her a little bit, how undignified she feels, because there is nothing dignified about the way her underwear soaks through whenever she thinks of Anna's fingers curling into her waistband.

It's embarrassing.

She shouldn't want it to happen again, but she's only human, and humans have appetites. Despite her dread, despite her embarrassment, despite her abject moral mortification, Elsa is starving like she's slept without food for 100 years. Her thoughts wander despite her hellbent efforts to stay focused, despite a weekend of uncharacteristic indulgence, fantasizing in her dorm room, lying back on her bed feeling the pulse between her legs with tentative fingers. For all that she's now aware of other bodies, it's the sudden, throbbing awareness of her own that is truly unsettling. A single, sloppy encounter with Anna's tongue has melted through the glaciers over her desires and loosed the magma underneath. A single eruption, a pyroclastic flow of feeling and emotion, has irreversibly transformed her body's icy landscape. It is impossible to go back to the way things were before.

She's a sexual being now.

Sam drops her off near the center of campus, mumbling something about a "food baby and a nap", and now Elsa's minds ticks steadily as she treks past a sluggish group of girls in tight yoga pants. Her cheeks glow and her blue eyes slide off toward the ground when she catches the tug of spandex over taut thighs and bulging butts. Curious urges rise and break the surface, but she forces them back down again, holding them under, drowning them. Her arms hang stiff at her sides, sleeves swishing lightly against the body of her jacket. Her fists curl, clench, and uncurl again, unsynchronized and erratic. Her gaze jumps between cracks in the sidewalk, and she muses on the ways in which she has earned a new appreciation for the struggles of pubescent boys, because college campuses are hotbeds for sexual expression and liberation, and Elsa has to keep her gaze glued to the bricks as she enters the quad, power walking around some kind of risque costume contest at the dj booth on her way to the north side.

The near deafening silence that washes over her as she enters the library soothes her mind like aloe on a sunburn. She takes the low, stone steps two at a time up a shallow staircase to the periodicals room and cuts across. The muted sounds of shifting books, swishing fabric, and light feet float to her between the stacks, interrupted here and there by the harsh staccato of a backpack zipper or a cough. Periodicals is a popular place to study, since it has the best wifi access and comfiest chairs, but she doesn't spot Anna's shock of red hair among any of the square, wooden tables. She passes through.

At the far end of the room she turns down a wide, arched passageway toward the main study hall. The change in temperature is immediately palpable, and Elsa shivers and hunches further into her jacket. The stone chamber is older and draftier than the other rooms, making it unpopular in the winter despite the superior scenery. Today, the study hall is nearly deserted. Charity Week is in its final throes and the rows of long wooden tables are largely vacant. Either Anna's professor is very unaware or very cruel, because Elsa can't imagine trying to prepare for a test in the midst of all the madness. She scans the room, and again, Anna is nowhere to be found.

Very reluctantly, Elsa shoots Anna a text, and leans up against a dark, polished bookcase, peering around blankly at the old hall. Silver light filters in through the stained glass windows, colors dulled by the looming rain clouds in the west. Her foot taps restlessly against the hardwood floor, unceasing, burning off excess adrenalin. She checks her watch and focuses on one of the giant, copper chandeliers to keep her thoughts corralled, to keep her imagination shut tight.

Her phone buzzes in her hand.

Fourth floor. SE corner :)

Elsa stares, blood thrumming in her ears, and then her feet begin to move, carrying her to the stairwell and up four flights before she's even worked out what's she supposed to say to the girl that went down on her three days ago.

It's dark on the southeast side. The clouds have covered the sun to the west, and the afternoon is waning. She finds Anna tucked away in a lonely corner at a long table, books and papers fanned out in an arc around her laptop, a brand new, silver Macbook that Elsa notes with some envy. Tall bookshelves press in around the table like a silent forest, and it's actually rather cozy and intimate, not at all where Elsa would have expected Anna to study.

Her boots scuff against the stiff carpet as she comes to a stop, blue eyes wavering.

Anna looks up at her.

Then… Oh.

Something snaps in the quiet, and Elsa looks down to find that she's cracked her plastic phone case, fissured now along one of the thinner sides. Her ears burn. Blinking at the floor, she shoves the device hastily in her coat pocket, out of sight, out of mind. A flash of red catches the corner of her eye and her chin is lifting again of its own according, gaze connecting, lashes falling to leave her crystal orbs half-lidded, half-dazed. She's in a trance before she can ward herself against it. She's disarmed before she can raise her sword.

Anna just smiles.

"Thanks for coming," she says, as if it were a favor and not somehow inevitable.

Her voice is velvety soft and her hair is piled atop her head in a tousled, messy bun, errant strands falling down around her face in ribbons of cinnamon and burnt orange. Elsa's mouth falls open, but she forgets to respond for a second, lost in the constellation of freckles on Anna's cheeks, and presently, the warm teal hue in her blue irises.

"I-um," Elsa stammers, eyes falling, as if weighted, down the ridges of Anna's collarbone toward the valley between her breasts. "You're... welcome."

Elsa clears her throat. Her weight shifts from one foot to the other. The cut of Anna's long, goldenrod shirt isn't even especially generous, but it doesn't matter. Anna licks her lips and the action doesn't go unnoticed. Elsa feels a telltale tightening of muscle between her legs.

"Hans gave you the book?" Anna asks, seemingly for something to say, and it's the spark that finally jolts Elsa forward.

"Right." She stumbles a bit. "Right, yes."

In haste, she slides her backpack off her shoulders and lays it on the table with an incriminating thump.

"Wow." Anna's eyebrows shoot up. "You've got a lot of stuff in there."

Elsa swallows. The sound of the zipper coming undone is harsh and startling, the muted atmosphere in the library nearly claustrophobic. She reaches into the largest pocket and begins to dig for Anna's book, but it has shifted around somehow. She mutters curses under her breath as she frantically begins to pull things out.

"Aha." Elsa's fingers slide across the face of Emperor Augustus, half hidden behind a spiral notebook. "Here." She whips it out and tosses it rudely onto the desk, grimacing immediately at the noisy smack it makes against the wood. "Um. Sorry. There's your book."

"Thanks."

Anna doesn't reach for it. Her eyes don't leave Elsa's face for even a single second, growing more intense, more intent. Tentative raindrops splatter on the windowpane behind her, gentle disturbances against the glass. Elsa can feel the burn from Anna's eyes, but she keeps her gaze fixed on the book, waiting to see if Anna will take it.

She doesn't.

"You wore your hair down."

Elsa's saliva turns to glue and she can't think of anything to say. She just nods again, and this time Anna hesitates.

"...Do you want to talk?"

Elsa flinches and turns her head, faces the opposite wall, trembles. Anna's voice sounds husky, quiet in a way that Anna is rarely quiet. It's humble and subdued. It's cautious. It's considerate of it's volume and it's effect. Elsa is terrified of what that might mean.

Wooden chair legs slide against the carpet and then Anna is stepping around the table, deliberately invading Elsa's space. Elsa's breath hitches and gives her away, but it's too much to hide. She can smell Anna now. The hairs on the back of her neck stand on end and her skin pebbles into goosebumps, caught in Anna's magnetic pull, straining to be closer. Elsa closes her eyes and tries to center herself. With Anna, she is always trying to center herself, and that is terrifying, too, because no one has ever thrown her off balance so much. Not even her father, her abusive, manipulative father could get so far under her skin. It's the best and worst kind of vertigo.

Anna slides closer, until their chests are nearly touching. She inhales audibly, nose brushing Elsa's collarbone through the fabric, errant hairs tickling Elsa's chin. Elsa's eyes flick open and she isn't strong enough to look away.

Anna sighs. "You smell really good." Her lips catch and tug against Elsa's shirt, tickling the skin beneath it.

Elsa hums nervously, awkwardly. "Like Chipotle?"

"No," Anna murmurs, and Elsa hears an exasperated giggle. "Definitely not like Chipotle."

"Anna-"

"-I can't stop thinking about the other night," Anna whispers, leaning up into her neck, breath rustling the hair tucked behind her ear. "It's like a video in my head on repeat."

"O-oh." Elsa's lashes flutter.

Every inch of her pale skin buzzes and burns.

"Honestly?" Anna cups the back of Elsa's neck, drags the tip of her tongue along the outer shell of Elsa's ear, paints a trail of static. "I don't want to stop thinking about it."

Elsa's thighs clench together. A tiny, startled whimper escapes her lips.

"God, if you only knew what you did to me..."

Anna takes Elsa's hand in hers, cool thumb brushing across a sweaty palm, and hikes up the hem of her long t-shirt. She presses Elsa's hand flush against the warm, soft skin of her abdomen and smiles at the way it makes both their chests hitch. Lava erupts out of Elsa's core and spills into her legs, her toes, her throbbing, aching fingertips.

Anna curls a thumb into the waistband of her leggings and tugs.

Elsa can't help herself. She panics a little.

"What're you doing?"

"Demonstrating."

A dark smile flickers across Anna's lips, and it's enough that Elsa nearly yanks her hand away, nearly runs for the stairwell. Her heart is beating so hard that it's making her dizzy. Why is she frozen? Why can't she move? It all becomes clear when Anna licks her lips and leans in, pressing a gentle kiss to the center of Elsa's throat.

And then she takes Elsa's hand and pushes it down.

"Oh!" she gasps.

There is a moment of blind panic as she brushes over a coarse patch of trimmed curls. Her eyes squeeze shut. She clenches her jaw and fights the impulse to move, whether to dive deeper or to come up for air she isn't sure, but Anna's hand is still entwined with hers, guiding her urgently lower into her underwear until Elsa is cupping something soft and slippery and hot.

So hot. So very, very hot.

Nerves forgotten, Elsa's fingers twitch and flex, inadvertently slipping deeper into the heat, until she's surrounded by soft, silky flesh, and wet up to the second knuckle.

Someone moans. Anna falls against her suddenly, bonelessly, breathing fast, and Elsa nearly loses her footing. She stumbles backwards, driven by Anna's weight, until her back hits the end of a bookshelf with a heavy thud and rattles the metal shelves. Elsa's fingers jerk automatically, trapped by layers of elastic fabric at the apex of Anna's legs, and Anna shudders, hand reaching up to tangle in Elsa's hair, arching until their chests are flush, breasts sliding past each other. Elsa gasps, overwhelmed with new sensations.

"Shit," Anna breathes, biting into the collar of Elsa's shirt.

Elsa strokes with her fingers. She watches, transfixed as Anna whines and writhes, twisting to prolong the contact, to hold their bodies closer. Elsa mimics the patterns that Anna made with her tongue, the memory still fresh in her mind. Anna is so wet already that Elsa's fingers are completely coated. They glide, frictionless, back and forth, pausing to swirl here or there, catching on Anna's clit, making her hips jump.

"Shit," Anna moans again, pressing sloppy kisses to swath of skin exposed at Elsa's collar. "Shit, Elsa. Oh my god."

Aggression bubbles up hot from somewhere deep, filling Elsa's mind with fire. She wraps an arm firmly around Anna's hips and drags her close, palming her ass, holding their bodies flush. Anna gasps, teal eyes rolling back into her head, and Elsa nearly growls, fingers throbbing even more painfully as she pushes deeper, probes Anna's opening with the pad of her index finger.

It's the right thing to do.

Anna's mouth falls open, wordless, breathless, tongue sliding against a ridge of white teeth. Her hips buck forward, hands grasping for holds. Every muscle in her face slackens, suspended for a moment of bliss. Elsa licks her lips and inserts the tip of her finger, watching them contract again, concentration renewed. Anna has to clutch at the front of her parka just to keep her legs beneath her, and Elsa can feel the energy shifting.

"Fuck." Anna sinks her teeth into Elsa's neck, and Elsa sinks her finger in deeper, as deep as their angle will allow. "Oh, fuck fuck fuck."

Elsa leans into her ear, bites her lip as Anna shudders. "Good?"

"Yes," Anna breathes. "God, keep going, please."

Elsa slides a second finger in to join the first, pumps both fingers slowly, and steadies her arm around Anna's waist, holding her close as she shivers and pants, hips canting against Elsa's wrist, writhing in Elsa's grasp. Elsa leans down and fixes her lips to Anna's jaw, feels the sparks race up and down her spine. She doesn't even notice the sharp sting of canine teeth cutting into her shoulder.

Suddenly, like a shot, a muffled cough carries through the stacks from the opposite end of the floor and freezes them both. Anna's body stills, eyes fluttering open, flicking up to Elsa's in alarm as they each remember where they are. Anna jerks as if to pull away, but Elsa's arm holds firm, fingers digging mercilessly into her cunt. She hasn't come this far to back down now. She's spent a lifetime averting her gaze. She's done with that.

Anna whimpers.

"Be quiet," Elsa warns. She grabs a fistful of red hair and pulls Anna's face into her chest, muffling an excited gasp against her shirt. "I want to finish you."

She starts up the rhythm again slow, and picks up the pace when Anna's body begins to respond. Another muffled cough rings out behind them, and Anna jumps, but Elsa doesn't stop this time. She pumps her fingers faster and kisses Anna's ear, whispering tiny encouragements as the body in her arms shudders and chases her thrusts.

"Are you close?"

Anna nods helplessly against Elsa's shirt.

Elsa sighs, because nothing has ever felt more powerful than this. Nothing has ever made more sense than this. Anna is unraveling against her body, and the only thing holding her together is Elsa's ruthless pace. Nothing has ever felt more amazing than this.

Nothing.

"Elsa," Anna murmurs, fists balled in the lapels of Elsa's coat, face flushed, bright hair sticking to her cheeks and her forehead, legs trembling so badly that she can barely stand, can barely keep Elsa's brutal cadence. "Yes!" she whispers.

She throws her arms around Elsa's neck and comes hard.

Elsa nearly comes with her.

Anna is so beautiful that Elsa has to look away, focuses instead on keeping both of them upright, propped against the bookshelf. Her shoulder blades are sore and she knows they'll be bruised in morning, knows that her underwear are wet and her jeans are likely damp, too, at the rate she's going, because Anna's body is still convulsing, chest sliding against hers with each rolling wave. Elsa is flushed and she's ready to go. Every breath that Anna heaves against her oversensitive neck is a tiny agony. She wants to crumble onto the hard carpet and drag Anna down with her.

Strip her.

Ravage her.

Keep her.

"Holy shit, you're amazing." Anna pulls away, smiling like an angel, wavering on weak legs. "Who taught you how to do that?"

Elsa offers a shaky smile. "I'm naturally talented."

"God, apparently." Anna laughs and runs her fingers through her hair. "Wow."

She turns and walks back to the desk, leans against it heavily, still so affected that she can barely stand. Anna's phone buzzes on the tabletop and she leans over to examine it. A light frown clouds her features. Her fingers swipe to cancel, and Elsa knows exactly who it is. She doesn't even need to ask. When Anna turns to look at her again, her expression is a little sheepish.

"So, um. Thanks for bringing the book. Sorry for jumping your bones like that." Anna rubs the back of her neck. "Studying makes me horny."

"Yeah." Elsa offers a stiff smile and lurches off the bookcase. "No problem."

"Want me to do you?" Anna asks, so casually that Elsa actually feels a little winded as she goes to pick up her bag. "I'm pretty talented, too."

Anna wiggles her fingers suggestively and Elsa hates herself for being so sorely tempted. She turns away, and it's like ripping off a bandaid. The sting lingers.

"No thanks. I have class in a bit."

"Right, no problem."

"Anyway." Elsa slips her pack onto her shoulders. "I'll see you later?"

Anna smiles, but she can't quite meet Elsa's eyes. She settles back in her chair and hunches over her laptop, hair falling like a shield around her face.

"I won't be back tonight."

"Going to the Delta Chi house?"

Anna nods and smiles again. Elsa walks away.

"Bye Anna."

/-/-/-/-/

Elsa takes the stairs back down and ducks into the bathroom on the first floor, finishing herself silently in the last stall with Anna's name trapped behind her teeth.

Afterwards, she washes her hands and avoids the mirrors. She lathers on three layers of soap and scrubs at her cuticles, but it doesn't make them clean enough. She can still smell Anna on her fingertips when she wanders off to the cafeteria to pick up a takeaway box for dinner.

/-/-/-/-/

It's dark and quiet in the dorm when Elsa gets home, slogging in from the cold, wet streets, dragging herself up five flights of stairs on aching, leaden legs. Her heavy backpack is overstuffed with books, digging literal grooves into her shoulders, a nearly unmanageable dead weight bouncing against her lower back. Everything hurts. She fumbles with her key card at the door, groaning miserably when it slips from her hands and falls to the floor. Nothing could be more inconvenient than trying to bend over in her current state. She glares down at the offending piece of plastic on the carpet, cursing its existence, and becomes even more frustrated with herself when hot tears prick her eyes.

"Elsa. Hey."

Kristoff's calm, deadpan tone is alarming in the quiet hallway, his approach unnoticed in the midst of Elsa's internal meltdown. She flinches visibly and draws away, startled and flustered, feeling somehow as though an intensely private moment has been interrupted. Kristoff only quirks a brow, looking no less bedraggled than she feels in a threadbare sweatshirt and sweatpants, greasy hair sticking up in several places as though he has been studying with his fingers knotted up in it for the whole night.

She clears her throat as best she can, but the sound is still incriminating. Everything she does is incriminating when he gives her one of his appraising looks.

"Hey," she says, trying for something even, achieving something hoarse.

He jerks his chin up once. "You okay?"

"Fine." With great difficulty, Elsa slides the pack from her shoulders and lets it thump heavily against the floor. "I dropped my key." She bends down to retrieve the white plastic card as she says this, mentally willing Kristoff to leave.

He does not leave.

"I haven't seen your roommate around much this week."

Elsa stiffens. "Neither have I."

"She stays at the Delta Chi house a lot, then?"

"I guess so."

He scratches his arm, glancing sidelong at the door as Elsa opens it, wedging her foot inside to keep it cracked. She makes a show out of appearing exasperated and exhausted, but if he notices her impatience, he doesn't say anything.

"Does it get lonely living here by yourself?"

Elsa stares back, confused. "I'm not alone."

"I mean, basically, you are. Right?"

She shifts her weight from foot to foot, annoyed to find that they both hurt equally. No rest for the wicked. She leans back against the doorframe and folds her arms, shoulders hunching.

"I guess so."

Kristoff nods. "And I bet the mess bothers you. You seem tidy."

Elsa purses her lips, then nods reluctantly.

"You don't have to live with the same roommate all year." Stoic as ever, Kristoff studies her confused expression for a moment in silence before continuing. "I just thought you might like to know. I have the change request forms in my room. Stop by if you need one."

"Um," Elsa blinks, noting the dull flicker of pain behind her heavy eyelids, "okay. Thanks."

Kristoff nods. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight," she echoes.

He pads off again down the hall, almost silently, Elsa realizes, and disappears into his room. How did such a big guy learn to be so quiet? She pushes her bangs out of her eyes and nudges the door open, reaching down to drag her heavy bag inside.

She thinks about the form before she nods off to sleep, but she doesn't reach a decision.

/-/-/-/-/

She doesn't sleep well. The nightmares return with a vengeance, and they follow her through several restless hours like a hitman with a grudge.

At three am she's wide awake, and it's all starting to sink in.

"I feel like I'm made of glass," Elsa says, wiping her tears away roughly into the crook of her elbow. "I think I forgot."

" _Forgot what?_ " Jenny whispers.

"That ice shatters."

" _Ice?_ "

Elsa sobs weakly into her kneecaps and brings a hand up to wind through her hair, fisting in it, tugging until the roots ache. "I'm just...I feel so brittle. Like I could break, just fly apart at any moment."

She hears a door close through the phone line, and knows that Jenny has stepped outside into the yard where Gary won't hear her. " _Babe, tell me what's wrong._ " Her whisper rises in volume, becoming a strained murmur. " _Tell me what happened._ "

"Anna happened."

" _Your roommate?_ "

"It's all fucked, Jen." Elsa grits her teeth. "I know why this is happening, you know? I'm not a good person. I killed my father. I shot him in the face-"

" _-Wait, babe-_ "

"I see him in my sleep," her voice breaks, drops breathlessly to a haunted whisper, "sometimes with half his face blasted off-"

" _-Elsa-_ "

"He follows me until I slip and then he holds me down bleeds all over me."

" _Jesus Christ, Elce._ "

Elsa chokes and sobs, smears her wet cheeks against her knees. The floor is hard and her pelvis aches from rocking. The fingers of her free hand slide and gather hot blood, streaming from a lattice of fresh cuts, painting guilty red trails on her pale thigh. She shivers violently and tilts her face up into the cold wind blowing in from the window. Her pajama pants are gone, thrown somewhere on one of Anna's piles. She should probably throw herself there, too, ridden hard and put away wet, entrapped so easily by the fleeting bursts of pleasure that her roommate offers. Goosebumps peak and prickle on her legs, her arms. She wipes her tears away with bloody fingertips, maybe forgetful, likely uncaring.

Right, she doesn't care.

Blood can be her warpaint.

"I'm covered in it." She stares down at her messy hand and curls it into a tight fist, gleaning brutal satisfaction from the telltale squelch of fluid. "It's all over me."

" _I really hope you don't mean literally._ "

Elsa crumples and sobs again.

" _Oh my god, babe. What did you do?_ "

She tries to breathe, tries to speak. Nothing comes out. Another sob escapes her clenched teeth.

" _Elsa. Elsa, talk to me. You're freaking me out._ "

"I-I'm n-not…" she sucks in a breath, "n-not like, g-gonna k-kill myself."

" _Fuck. Okay. Okay, you're okay._ "

"I'm n-n-not-"

" _Shh, Elce. You're just having a panic attack, right? It's okay. Breathe slowly in and out, okay?_ "

"Jen…"

" _It's okay. Breathe_."

Elsa breathes. Jen listens and waits. Elsa keeps breathing. The blood gets stickier as it dries. The cold air gets colder. The throbbing pain in her thighs returns with a vengeance, unhappily forgotten. She shivers and pulls her legs close against her chest. She'll have to throw the shirt out later.

" _Tell me what happened with Anna._ "

A familiar pitter-patter hits the ledge outside and Elsa stands on shaking legs, trekking across the room to close the window. The snow is almost gone and the rain keeps coming. A huddled pair of boys trudge along the path below in sodden costumes, half covered by their coats, weaving from a night of drunken revelry. A flash of envy marrs her face. The old windowpane groans and shudders as she tugs it shut.

" _Elsa._ "

"We fucked."

The words feel clunky and unpracticed in her mouth, but they're appropriate. She wipes her eyes, catches sight of her tear-stained, blood-smeared face in the vanity mirror and turns away sharply. The room is dark, veiled in thick shadows, even now that her eyes have long since adjusted. There is no moon to light the way.

Jenny is quiet, but Elsa can hear her breathing into the phone. She picks her way carefully through Anna's mess and waits.

" _I...that's…_ " Jenny sighs. " _Oh_."

"Yeah."

" _Once?_ "

Elsa looks down at her bed, doesn't sit. "Twice."

" _Oh_."

"Don't tell Gary. He'll mail me another Bible."

Jenny laughs weakly. " _He kinda gave up on that after you shot your dad_."

"Oh, yeah." Elsa sighs. "Well, I was wondering about that."

" _Gary's a dick_."

"Yeah."

" _So, that's what's got your head all fucked up?_ "

"Maybe. Yes. I don't know."

" _Elsa, for real, are you okay? Like, I know you're a strong independent woman who don't need no man and all that..._ " Jenny pauses, scoffs at herself, and presses on. " _Anyway, I know you can take care of yourself, but it's the middle of the night, and I've never heard you freak out like this. I'm worried._ "

Elsa turns away from her bed and stumbles to the bathroom, pausing in the doorway, not ready yet to flip on the light and face the damage. "It's happened before. It used to happen all the time."

" _You never told me._ "

"I know."

" _What changed?_ "

Elsa hears the implicit question and worries her bottom lip. When did she decide to cross the line in the sand?

"I never thought you wanted to hear about it."

" _What? No, of course I did. I don't know if I would've been much help, but I would've listened if you'd needed me to._ " Jenny hesitates, and continues softly, " _It didn't seem like you wanted to talk about it. I tried not to pry._ "

Elsa closes her eyes and feels fresh tears prickle. "Damnit."

" _We were dumb._ " Jenny huffs a laugh. " _Can't fix the past though. I'll listen now, if you want._ "

Elsa smiles. "Will you still love me if I'm gay?"

" _Shut up._ "

Her smile grows a little bit wider.

" _...Are you gay?_ "

"Remember when Zach Carpenter tried to kiss me at Hayley's 15th birthday party?"

" _Flaming. Got it._ "

Elsa laughs and leans her head back against the door frame. "Can lesbians be flaming?"

" _Fuck it, Elsa. You can be whatever the fuck you want, okay_?"

She flicks on the bathroom lights, winces, and covers her eyes. "Okay."

/-/-/-/-/

* * *

 _A/N: Any guesses what Anna's getting up to at night? ;)_


	10. Chapter 10

_3.30.16_

 _Hey y'all. Just finished a big cross country move, and I am freaking exhausted. As a result, I had to cut this chapter a bit short. I didn't want to make everyone wait another 2 weeks for the next post._

 _Anyway, we're setting the stage for some good drama here, so enjoy!_

 _-Rex_

* * *

 **9.**

Tuesday morning dawns cold, wet, and dark.

She skips class and lies curled up in her underwear, wool socks, and bloody shirt, burrowed deep under her blankets, listening to heavy raindrops pelt the windows. Weak, grey light seeps in through the blinds, casting a pewter gloom onto the beige, brick walls. It doesn't bother her. She doesn't mind the rain at all. She sees it for the blessing it is and thanks whoever's listening.

Maybe no one. Not to her, anyway. Good people don't ask for respite from the sun.

The all-revealing sun.

The cuts on her leg are raw and tender, wrapped up and slathered with Neosporin. Footsteps trail down the hallway outside her door, and from her little cocoon of warmth, Elsa tries to remember if she cleaned up all the blood in the bathroom, whether she put away the knife and the little box of horrors. It's hard to care now with the lethargy of stress and fatigue lying heavy on her bones. It's hard to care now about gritting her teeth with a washrag in her hand, trying to speak to Jenny in a normal voice through the sting of rubbing alcohol.

A twinge of pain shoots up her leg when the blanket brushes over her bandages at awkward angle. Elsa groans and shuts her eyes. The burns were worse, but this is a close second.

She's getting reckless.

Jenny and Sam both call and leave voicemails. Elsa silences her phone, rolls over in bed, and sleeps until her spine hurts. She only gets up for her bladder, when it insists, but she doesn't stay up. The bed is her castle, and the blankets are her walls. The outside world is fraught with perils.

She sleeps on.

/-/-/-/-/

The clock on her desk reads four in the afternoon when she finally hates herself too much to sleep anymore. The needles of self-loathing have become knives, and she reluctantly pulls herself upright, quilt falling away to pool around her waist. If nothing else, it's the worth the effort just to stretch out her back, sore and aching from hours spent curled up into unnatural positions. The sweat on her skin cools and chills her instantly. Elsa yawns, shivering a bit, hugging her chest to trap a little heat. It's Halloween and the dorm is loud. Outside her door, footsteps carry up and down the hallway, voices echo from the other rooms, laughing, talking, shouting to each other. Doors slam and rock the walls. Music blares from her neighbors on both sides.

She stares at the bedspread and wishes she was still asleep. Instead, she reaches for her phone and reads through the waiting messages.

The first three are, predictably, from Sam.

 _where are you?_

 _class is starting_

 _are you sick? wanna do dinner w mari?_

The rest are from Jenny.

 _hey it was good catching up last night. you okay still? im here if you need anything._

 _at least text me and let me know you're okay_

 _elsa?_

 _wtf are you?_

 _don't ignore me you slut_

Elsa wipes at her groggy eyes and fires back two brief responses, one to each of them. Yes to dinner. Yes she's okay. It has to be enough because she can't manage more at the moment. She returns to the home screen and blinks at the notification.

*1 New Voicemail*

Reluctantly, Elsa opens the message and listens.

" _Elsa, it's your mother._ " She rolls her eyes. Does her mom really not think she knows her voice by now. " _Call me when you get this. We need to talk about holiday plans. I think I'm flying out to Seattle to visit your aunt and...anyway, love you. Call me._ "

Her aunt? Aunt Brie? Elsa squints at her phone. She ticks off her fingers, counting the years in her head. How long's it been?

She dials the number and puts the phone to her ear.

" _Elsa?_ "

"Hey, mom. You're going to see Aunt Brie?"

" _Oh_ , _hello, daughter. How are you? I am well, thank you for asking_."

"Mom."

" _Yes, she invited me to come visit._ "

"Oh. Okay."

" _Would you like to come?_ "

Elsa bites her lip, stares down at her blankets. As she's thinking about it, a card key clicks in the lock and the door begins to open. It feels as though it's been a very long time without outside human contact. The intrusion of a real person into her gloomy little space is unwelcome. She's not prepared. She very nearly panics.

" _Elsa?_ "

"Um, sorry I-" Elsa's eyes dart around, floundering for something to say. "Yeah, I'm just checking my calendar. "

" _But don't you get some time off?_ "

Anna trudges through the door in a pink raincoat, and freezes for just half a second when she spies Elsa lying in bed. A shy smile lights up her face.

"Hi!" she says, and then winces when she sees the phone. "Oh, sorry!"

" _Who's that?_ "

"Um, it's um… it's my roommate."

"Is that your mom?" Anna stage whispers, pointing dramatically at the phone.

" _Oh, your roommate? Oh! I never met her! How is she?"_

"Yes," Elsa says to Anna. "Good," she says to her mother.

" _Do you like her? Do you guys get along?_ "

Elsa flushes pink and turns away towards the wall, steaming in her own embarrassment. "Let's talk about that another time, maybe?"

Her mom laughs. " _Sure, honey._ "

Anna catches her eye and gives her a thumbs up. Elsa gives her a tight smile in return. This is absolutely not a situation she wants to deal with right now. She'd rather to crawl under her covers and hide forever. _Of course_ , Anna would come home _now_ , of all times, to find Elsa slumming it in bed after another of their sexy encounters. What's she going to think? It's so obvious what's going on. What other conclusions could Anna really draw from this? Frantic thoughts race through her brain. Elsa wants to put her head through the wall.

Anna, meanwhile, chucks her bag on the floor and head for the bathroom, and Elsa experiences a brief moment of panic when she recalls that never _did_ check to see if she wiped up all the blood. Her eyes widen. She yanks the covers away from her stomach and glances down at the front of her shirt.

Shit.

Not good.

Elsa scrambles out of bed and stumbles to her closet.

" _So, did you want to come to Seattle with me? I need to know ASAP so I can book you a ticket_."

"Ummm," Elsa digs through her drawer and pulls out a flannel shirt. "For how long?"

She peels the soiled shirt up over her head and chucks it in the back of the closet, then hastily sets about stuffing her arms into the sleeves of her clean flannel. Halfway through she realizes that it's inside out, curses, rips it off, and starts over again.

" _Well, how many days do you have off_?"

"Umm." She shrugs the shirt up over her shoulders. "Just Thursday and Friday, I think."

" _What? That's it?_ "

At that moment, the bathroom door flies open and Anna's head pokes out. "Hey, Elsa, why is the...?" She pauses, eyes widening, gaze fixing itself intently on Elsa's chest. "Uh."

Anna's pupils dilate, teal swallowed up by expanding orbs of black. For a second, both of them are frozen, speechless, until, in a flash of extreme embarrassment, Elsa realizes what the problem is. She glances down at her torso. She's braless, and her flannel hangs open down to the waist, unbuttoned, exposing the valley of pale skin between each of her breasts. She turns her eyes back to Anna, swallowing thickly as she watches the tip of Anna's tongue flick out to moisten her lips. Elsa's heart skips a beat. She scrambles to steady herself against the closet door, mind held momentarily hostage by an overwhelming impulse to suck Anna's tongue into her mouth.

She shudders, and suddenly, despite the cold, she is sweating under the collar of her shirt.

" _Elsa_?"

She flushes violently, reaching down with clumsy fingers to fasten the buttons across her chest. "Sorry," she says, hastily, but she still can't tear her eyes off Anna's face.

" _Do you want to go or not? I can fly you out Wednesday night_."

"From Buffalo?"

" _Yes."_

Anna's eyes slither down her torso, lingering to swirl over her navel, trailing south over her pelvis to her thighs, where they immediately widen and come to an abrupt stop. Elsa quivers when she remembers what she had almost forgotten.

No pants.

Bandages.

"Your leg," Anna says.

Shit.

Her face doesn't look quite so flushed anymore, maybe just a bit green. Elsa's throat bobs. Her fingers tighten on her shirt. The phone quivers unsteadily in her hand.

" _Here's one that leaves Buffalo at 8pm. It gets in at midnight._ "

Elsa searches Anna's eyes, pleads with them. "I cut myself shaving."

Anna peers into the bathroom. "There's a bloody rag in the trash." She turns back, pinning Elsa to the spot with knowing eyes.

Shit.

" _What was that, honey?_ "

"Nothing, um." Elsa swallows hard, closes her eyes, tries to breathe. "Um, how would I get to Buffalo? Take the bus?"

" _You could. Let me look at bus fares_."

"Elsa."

She opens her eyes and glances up. A shock of red and blue fills her vision. Anna is hovering right in front of her. With a tiny yelp of surprise, Elsa trips over her feet, stumbling back until her legs hit the bed and she flops artlessly onto the mattress. It's a ridiculous scene. It should be funny, and maybe it would be in another moment, a lighter one, but Anna doesn't smile. Elsa runs a sheepish hand through her hair. Her scattered thoughts are traitorous, just flashes of sound and sensation, the smell of Anna's hair, the feel of her breath against Elsa's neck, the tightening of her grip on Elsa's shoulders. Their tryst library feels so fresh that Elsa wonders if it ever ended. The weight of Anna's gaze brings everything rushing right back, like no time has passed at all, like Elsa hasn't been stewing in rage and regret for 24 straight hours, like she hasn't been quietly obsessed since the last time they were together in this room. Elsa's traitorous body shivers, because it remembers. It recalls how the atmosphere was so very, radically, charged then.

Elsa laments that it may _never_ forget.

If it's charged now, however, it's for none of the same reasons, because this time Anna is walking over and kneeling down to look at the wounds on her leg. This time Elsa is shaking because she's so nauseous she might throw up any second. This time Elsa is biting her lip and trying not to cry.

And her mother is trying to tell her about bus fares, and it's too much.

Elsa is awful. She knows. She knows this. She _knows_.

This conversation should be good. It should be amazing. She should be crying tears of happiness and hope. Her mother is taking the first steps toward healing, is going to visit a sister she hasn't seen in years, a sister that walked away from them after the conviction and the fated call to CPS, the call that sealed their relationship with a bitter promise not to stand idly by while Elsa's childhood was destroyed by a "meth-addled monster".

Somehow, even knowing all this, as she watches Anna's eyes flick back and forth over the damage, it's still too much.

"Mom, I'm sorry-" she chokes, stumbles, tries to breathe. "Mom I have to go."

Anna touches the bandage and Elsa flinches away. It hurts. It hurts in ways that she can't put to words. It burns in ways that she doesn't want to think about. It's too much. It's too close. No one was supposed to know. No one was supposed to get hurt. How will she explain? How will she explain the shadow of violence that follows her? How can she speak her evils aloud and expect them to remain repressed, locked up safe in dark crevices?

A troubled expression crosses Anna's face, pinched and drawn, tight around the eyes, thin through the lips and the mouth, but it's only fleeting, just a cloud passing over the sun. When she peers up again, Elsa can't read her at all.

" _What? Is everything alright? I can-_ "

"Mom, I'm...sorry. I really have t-to g-go." The words are jagged and stilted, forced through clenched teeth.

She ends the call and drops the phone on the bed, shaking like a leaf.

"Elsa?"

"I'm fine."

Anna scoffs.

Anger flares up in Elsa's chest, and the tears that track down her face are scorching. "What?" She spits the word with venom, with vitriol. "Something you want to say?'

Anna, to her credit, doesn't flinch. "Oh no, I was just sitting here thinking about how obviously fine you are with a chopped up leg and all that. Don't mind me."

She starts to touch the bandages again, but Elsa lunges out and grabs her roughly by the wrist, holding her still. "You don't know _anything_ about it."

"I don't," Anna admits, palming her knee, sliding her fingers very gently along Elsa's skin. "Wanna enlighten me?" Her eyes drop to Elsa's lips, and Elsa trembles with a different feeling when she catches a flicker of thirst there.

Elsa shudders, and now she's not even certain what she's shaking for.

Fear, probably.

"I've done things I regret. I deserve a lot more than this."

Anna strokes gently with her thumb, and Elsa's eyes flutter closed. "You don't deserve this."

"You don't know that."

"Maybe I do."

Elsa opens her eyes and traces the firm, hard set of Anna's jaw. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying we've all done things we regret."

"And how much would you give to take it all back?" Elsa wipes her tears away, takes a quivering breath. "How much?"

Anna lowers her gaze, and brushes her thumb once more across the gauze. Her answer is quiet when it finally arrives. "More than this, I guess."

Icy fingers grip Elsa's heart, chilling her, sending a shiver through her body. They sit in silence for almost a full minute, each contemplating their own thoughts. At length, Anna shifts impatiently, a familiar look of resolve crossing her face.

"Let me touch you," she says, suddenly determined.

"W-what?"

"I'm serious. It'll make you feel better. Let me touch you."

The suggestion floats softly into Elsa's ears, rolls softly down Elsa's spine, conjuring fresh memories of the day before. She can still feel the the tight burn and the electric pulse, the friction of her fingers buried deep between her own legs, the chill of the metal bathroom stall pressed hard against her temple. She didn't give Anna a chance to return the favor, and it wasn't for lack of wanting. She curls her hands to dispel the sudden throbbing in her fingertips. The phantom sensation of Anna's skin tingles on her palms.

"C'mon," Anna urges, and her breathlessness gives her away. "I owe you for yesterday."

Elsa chafes at the thought, recovering some of her resolve. "I don't want any favors from you."

Anna flinches at her chilly tone.

"What?" Elsa grits her teeth. "Not enjoying it this time?"

"Better at hiding it." Anna bends down to press a soft kiss to skin at the edge of Elsa's bandages, fingers ghosting lightly over her calf, then settling, with warmth and weight, on her thigh. "But we're not worrying about me today."

Neatly clipped fingernails dig pale crescents into Elsa's skin, staking their claim. Elsa catches her lip between her teeth and bites down, strangling a whimper. Her whole body is responding and it's almost impossible to hold back. It's like being electrocuted. It's like being plunged into icy water. It's like…

Anna scrapes red trails into Elsa's thigh, and suddenly she is gasping.

She's not sure how she knows that Anna recently cut her nails, but she _knows_ , and she knows _why_. It hits her like a plot twist that she should've seen coming. Their encounter Friday night, with the tequila and the seemingly random, seemingly impetuous proposition, is looking more deliberate by the second. Elsa's stomach tightens.

Anna shifts to press another kiss against her thigh, longer and lewder. The next one strays further inward over increasingly sensitive terrain.

Elsa takes in a deep breath, holds it until she can't anymore, and blows it out.

Fresh tears bubble up and spill over, dripping into Anna's hair. She claws at Anna's braids until the rubber bands are coming loose and soft red curls are unraveling in her hands. Silky tendrils tumble over her knuckles and her wrists, and she threads her fingers in deep at the back of Anna's scalp until she's anchored there like a ship, holding on to spite the waves. Anna shivers. Greedy hands grab Elsa's ass and tug her indelicately toward the edge of the mattress, forcing her thighs further apart. Anna's lips move higher, wetter and more pliant, teeth darting out to nip and bite. With her knuckles, she strokes the fabric between Elsa's legs, and a wicked smile curls the corners of her lips when she finds it already damp.

"Are you...s-sure you want to do this?" Elsa pants, but even as she asks her hips are pressing forward, grinding harder into Anna's fingers.

Anna rolls her eyes and deftly strips away Elsa's underwear, mindful of the bandages. Her middle finger dips in deep to gather and spread the moisture, sending a bolt of sharp pleasure up Elsa's spine. Elsa's eyes roll back into her head. She's already forgotten her question by the time Anna says, "I'm sure," and leans forward to execute a rather complex maneuver with her tongue.

With two fingers curling inside her she soon forgets her own name.

/-/-/-/-/

She's late to dinner.

Mari and Sam wait for her just inside the student life building, peering with disgust through the windows out into the pouring rain. The wind has picked up and the precipitation is coming in waves now, torrents starting up suddenly here and there without pattern or preference. Low clouds catch the street lights from the city, and their wispy edges glow orange, trailing like fingers of smoke and fire across the sky. Wet, brown leaves, the last dregs of Autumn, squelch beneath Elsa's boots as she makes her way quickly across the quad. She angles her body away and attempts to shield herself from the worst of it, but the wind shakes the trees, blowing a deluge of watery missiles from their branches up under the hood of her coat.

Her friends offer sympathy waves as she approaches. They strip off their sodden jackets together and hang them by the door as they enter the cafeteria.

"You missed class today." Sam spools an impressive knot of spaghetti around her fork and shoves it in her mouth. "Mmph. M'why?"

Mari rolls her eyes. "Sorry my roommate talks with her mouth full. She was raised by cavemen."

"Mm. Wolves actually."

"Cave wolves? You're an etiquette tragedy, Samantha."

The brunette shrugs. "At least I don't cry when I break a nail."

"God, I _told_ you. They took an hour to do! An _hour_!"

"Christ," Sam holds out a placating hand, "okay, okay."

Elsa huffs a laugh and bites into her garlic bread. It's her second piece, and she seriously considers swinging through the line again to pick up a third, just to mop up the rest of her bolognese sauce. She's worked up an impressive appetite, never mind the reason, and, despite the weather, she feels uncharacteristically lighthearted. The rest of campus seems to reflect her mood. All around her, the cafeteria is filled with excited students in costumes. There are jack-o-lanterns and miniature plastic cauldrons of candy corn set out on the tables. The kitchen staff has tacked up translucent ghost cutouts on the large, panoramic windows and strung fake spider webs across the walls. A robotic witch next to the soda machine shrieks every time someone goes to refill a drink. Shrill cackles presently echo through the hall, followed by the distinct clatter of a plastic cup hitting the ground. Elsa smiles.

"She doesn't look sick."

"Because she's not, obviously."

Elsa zones back in. Are they talking about her?

"Yeah, but Elsa never misses class."

Yes.

"I didn't feel like going," Elsa answers calmly, almost serenely. "I was up late."

"Yeah, well you looked like shit yesterday, so that's probably a good thing. You didn't miss much anyway."

Mari gives Sam pointed a look. "Rude."

"What?"

"Don't just tell people they look like shit. What the fuck is wrong with you?"

Sam rubs the back of her neck. "Cave wolves?"

Elsa snorts and polishes off the last bite of bread. "I'm going for more garlic bread. Anyone else want more?"

Mari and Sam both stop to stare at her as she stands, plate in hand.

"What?"

Mari arches a brow. "Somebody's hungry tonight."

"Um." Elsa's eyes shift between them. "I haven't eaten all day?"

"Is that a question?" Mari smirks and waves her hand. "Go. Get food. Oh, and bring me a cookie."

"What kind?"

"Chocolate chip." She scoffs. "I'm going to pretend you didn't ask me that." Sam sucks a bit of red sauce off her fingers, and Mari frowns at her. "Use your fork."

Sam ignores her. "What about your diet?"

"Cheat day."

"But if everyday is a cheat day-"

"-What would you know about it? You're a human garbage disposal."

"Hey!" Sam pats her stomach. "I'm a growing cave wolf!"

"Oh my god."

"You've created a monster," Elsa says, adopting a note of mock disdain. She shakes her head and tuts under her breath. "We'll have to donate her to the zoo."

Mari snorts and shoos her away. "Cookie. Go."

The roommates continue to bicker and squawk as she heads toward the kitchen. Elsa just smiles.

For now, everything feels…

Okay.

/-/-/-/-/

" _This can't become a thing._ " Jennifer's worried voice crackles down the line. " _Elsa, tell me this won't become a thing._ "

Elsa sighs and stares at her face in the mirror.

It was too good to last, really. She looks tired.

"I think it's already a thing, Jen."

" _Elsa. No. It can't be a thing_."

"Why not?" She angles her hip against the vanity counter and roots through Anna's pile of hair products for the elusive box of clean Q-tips.

" _You know why_."

Yeah, alright. She does know why. That doesn't mean she's going to dwell on it.

"I'm trying not to overthink it."

" _There's really nothing to overthink here, Elce. Just stop whatever you're doing. Stop doing it. Period. End of story._ "

Elsa bites her lip. "And what if I don't want to?"

Jenny is silent for a long moment. " _I'm not your mom_ ," she replies irritably, and it's clear enough what that means.

She's washing her hands of the situation.

"I'm sorry, I just…I don't really know what I'm doing." Elsa picks up and examines a box of blackhead clearing facial strips that Anna has ripped open from the wrong end. "I'm out of my depth."

" _You'll be even more out of your depth when she breaks your fucking heart, Larsen_."

"She won't."

" _How can you be sure_? _She's already a cheater. You don't think you're special or something, right? Because you're not. Cheaters are cheaters are cheaters._ "

"She won't." Elsa drops the box and continues her search, sweeping aside a pile of hair ties and bobby pins. "I don't exactly have a heart to break anymore."

" _God, you're such a dramatic hoe. Can you even hear yourself talk? That's most the emo load of shit I've ever heard_."

Elsa laughs under her breath. "Wasn't it you who went on a 30-minute tirade about the collective evils of slut-shaming?"

" _Dramatic. Hoe._ "

"Whatever."

" _Look, so what if you shot your piece of shit dad?_ " Elsa winces and turns away from the mirror. " _You still have a heart. Fuck, Adolph fucking Hitler had a fucking heart. Don't fucking spew that bullshit at me and pretend you're some untouchable piece of ice, Elsa, because you're really going to fucking regret it when this all goes south_."

Elsa hums, toeing the carpet. "...You're really passionate about this."

Jenny sighs, and for several seconds, only silence carries down the line. Elsa grips her phone a little tighter. She gives up searching the vanity and shuffles into the bathroom to look for the elusive box of Q-tips in the cabinet.

" _I hate that I have to keep telling you this. I care about you, Elsa. A lot._ "

"I know."

" _No, I don't think you do._ " Jenny's voice sounds strained all of a sudden, hoarse even, and Elsa stops to listen. " _I think you believe that everyone's gonna leave you in the end. I think you keep everyone at arm's length so you can protect yourself from the inevitable abandonment._ "

Tears sting Elsa's eyes. "Jen."

" _You think you're immune to Anna because you already expect her to leave, but Elsa that's not… God, that's just not how it fucking works._ "

Elsa's lip trembles. Her eyes fall to the tile floor. Her chest feels like wet parchment being stretched out to dry. Every breath she takes is uniquely painful.

The words sting as she utters them. "Isn't it?"

" _No, babe."_

Elsa's muscles lurch, and she covers her mouth, shaking with effort it takes to hold herself back. The darkness presses against her chest from within, banging against her ribs, screaming like an inmate cursing through the prison bars. Elsa tries to swallow the rancor. She tries to hold it all in.

"Isn't it?" she gasps.

She hears Jenny take a deep breath. " _Tell me honestly that you don't already love her._ "

Elsa nearly chokes. She squeezes her words out with sheer willpower, but they sound like they've passed through a filter of day-old porridge flecked with bits of corroded metal.

"I don't love her."

" _...Whatever you say._ "

"Jen..."

" _Just...please be careful_."

Elsa sinks down onto the lid of the toilet and puts her head in her hands.

" _Elsa. Promise me this won't become a thing_."

"Okay."

" _Promise me_."

"Okay. I promise."

"... _I don't think you've ever sounded less convincing_."

Elsa smiles weakly into her fingers. She doesn't think so either.

/-/-/-/-/

Finals draw nearer and their professors begin talking about the end of term papers. Pressure mounts as the holidays loom and it's all anyone can do to stay abreast of the tidal wave of adult responsibilities. Studying isn't really Elsa's problem. She's always been a good student, and, ordinarily, she has an uncanny memory, but in high school she had been a loner with a social life that consisted of walking to McDonald's with Jenny after school. She's never had to deal with so many distractions before, and now, even in the darkest, most desolate corners of the library, her mind wanders away from her. She's hard pressed to concentrate on anything for longer than a few minutes at a time.

By mid November, the stress is getting to her.

' _i know a pretty good way to relieve that tension,'_ is all Anna sends before Elsa's typing back a message of ' _where and when?'_

After two sessions, the code they develop for it is efficient, if not subtle.

 _Stress relief?_

Elsa forces herself to wait twenty minutes sometimes before she responds. It's a point of pride for her, to hold out for as long as she can. The truth is that she'd sprint a mile just to meet Anna in a wet dumpster, but no one has to know that. Not Anna, and definitely not Jen. The illusion of dignity is just as important as the real thing, in this case.

The running narrative, of course, remains the same.

It doesn't become regular.

Occasional at best. Maybe.

Elsa licks up the inside of Anna's thigh in a bathroom stall and repeats the words to herself like a mantra until Anna's harsh breathing drowns out her thoughts completely.

It's not a thing.

It's not.

It's not.

/-/-/-/-/

Elsa tells her mother that she's too busy with schoolwork to make a trip out to Seattle. She feels only a little guilty because it's actually a little true. Her study guide for biology is 15 pages long, she hasn't finished _Crime & Punishment_, or her German essay on Kafka's _Die Verwandlung_ , and her term paper for Am Civ I, which she has taken care to start early, isn't going well at all. A gloomy Friday night finds her sitting in the campus coffee bar under low lights making cranky expressions at her computer. The words that normally come to her so easily look clunky and foreign as she types them out on the screen. She's been editing the same paragraph for over half an hour without making any progress. The cursor blinks steadily against a daunting expanse of white pixels, like some digital form of Chinese water torture.

Elsa sips at her tea. It's cold now and oversteeped, but the astringency of it is likely the only thing keeping her alert. She braces herself and takes another sip.

Anna finds her unexpectedly at her back corner table behind a potted ficus tree. The weather has been cold and dry, so she's dressed elegantly in a grey peacoat and hunter boots, a thick scarf of blue merino wool wrapped twice around her neck. Her crimson hair is windblown, her freckled cheeks ruddy and flushed. She looks like she's ready for a day of ice skating, and Elsa wonders suddenly what it be like to take her.

"Fancy seeing you here." Anna unwinds her scarf a little to free up her mouth. "Whatcha workin' on?"

"Am Civ term paper," Elsa grunts, spine popping audibly as she leans back in the hard metal chair.

"When's it due?"

"Two weeks."

Anna smiles warmly. "Overachiever."

"You know that my scholarship is merit based, right?"

Anna pulls out a chair and sits down, edging away from a low-hanging ficus branch. "I didn't know you had a scholarship."

"I'm sure I told you." Elsa frowns. "Didn't I?"

"I don't think so. I would've remembered if you had. Explains the adorable nerdiness." Anna sighs lightly and gazes around at the sparsely inhabited cafe. "Whatcha drinkin'?"

"Earl Grey Tea." Elsa takes another sip and wrinkles her nose. "Cold Earl Grey Tea."

"Want a refill?"

"I'm fine. The grossness is keeping me awake."

Anna laughs and studies Elsa thoughtfully for a moment. Her teal eyes are dark in the low light, but they still seem to glitter somehow, tracing the contours of Elsa's face in contented silence.

Elsa adds another poorly crafted sentence to her rough draft before she speaks again. "So, what're you doing here so late?"

Her roommate hums, shifting slowly out of her quiet reverie. "I'm meeting Hans."

"Oh." Elsa's mouth twists.

She looks back down at her computer and tries to neutralize the frown creeping up on her face.

It's really not his fault, anyway.

Fortunately, Anna doesn't seem particularly interested in elaborating. Instead, she crosses her arms and then her legs, which, Elsa knows by now, means she's feeling vulnerable about something.

"I had a question for you, actually, "she says, and her eyes are careful as they watch Elsa, gauging her reaction.

"Really?"

Anna snorts softly. "You sound so surprised."

Oh, no!" Elsa shakes her head. "No, sorry. I'm just being a weirdo. What's your question?"

Anna unwraps the rest of her scarf and pops the top button of her coat. Elsa curses her weak self control as her eyes follow each movement like a cat stalking a mouse, with rapt, unwavering attention. A thought rises unbidden to the surface of her mind and she is too weak not to indulge herself for a moment, imagining the feel of her own fingers against coarse wool, sliding the rest of the buttons through their holes and peeling the garment from Anna's slim shoulders. Elsa's eyes droop, and she wishes she could lay her head on Anna's chest while she drifts off to sleep.

She's just tired, really.

"What're you doing for Thanksgiving?"

Elsa shakes the images away. "Nothing. Staying here, I guess."

"You should come home with me."

"Home?" Elsa blinks. "As in, your home?"

"No, Rosie O'donnell's home."

"Um…"

"Yes, Elsa." Anna's eyes dance. "My home. Well, my home _and_ my grandma's home, actually, but whatever. Potayto, potahto."

Elsa blushes and scrubs at her cheeks to hide it. It only makes it worse.

"Are you sure?"

At this, Anna looks extremely amused. "Seriously, you're too cute. Of course I'm sure! I wouldn't ask unless I was."

"I just…" Elsa trails off while she thinks of a delicate way to word her concerns. "I just wondered whether maybe you hadn't considered all of the consequences of inviting me to spend Thanksgiving at your house. With your parents."

"Don't forget the siblings," Anna says cheerfully, and if it seems just slightly more forced, neither of them are eager to acknowledge it.

The strain goes unmentioned, and really, Elsa only has to think about it for a second. "Okay, if you're sure, then yes."

"Yes, you'll come?"

Elsa smiles, and it's a little bit breathless, a little bit shaky. "Yes, I'll come."

"Yay!" Anna squeals and hops in her chair a little bit. "I'm so glad!"

Elsa rubs the back of her neck, chagrined. She can feel the flush creeping up her neck, and it's then she realizes how flustered she is, how excited, how nervous, how scared. Her natural instincts take over. She almost can't help herself. Anna's smile is too bright to look at. Anna's smile is scalding. Elsa needs to deflect.

"Will you really need stress relief that bad over the holidays?" she mutters, shifting her gaze.

Anna gives her a strange look. "That's not what this is about."

"I…well, I just didn't want to assume that-"

"-Elsa."

"Sorry, what?"

"It's fine. You're fine. I mean, I guess I've never really told you, but I also just…"

"...What?"

Anna looks down at her fingers, twined together. "I also just enjoy your company."

Elsa doesn't know quite what to say. Her tongue feels as though it has swollen to fill her mouth.

"Oh," is all she manages.

Anna returns an apologetic smile and reaches for her phone, buzzing on the tabletop. Mired in her frantic thoughts, Elsa hadn't noticed it before, but the spell is broken now. The sounds in the cafe slowly return to her. The computer screen in front of her flickers and goes dark. How late is it? How long have they been talking? Honestly, she zones in so hard on Anna sometimes that the world disappears. Sometimes she forgets who she is.

"I've got to go," Anna announces.

She stows her phone in her pocket and pauses, peering at Elsa's hands for a moment. Elsa looks down to find that her hands have curled themselves into fists, balled up on either side of her laptop. She forces them to relax as Anna shakes herself and reaches up to retie her scarf. The buttons of her coat are done up again, tucking Anna's pale throat away behind a layer of thick wool.

"Hans?" Elsa asks.

She immediately wants to clap a hand over her horrible, jealous mouth. Why is she even asking? She doesn't actually want to know. Anna doesn't actually want to say it. They stare at each other, biting their lips, considering their words reluctantly, until finally, Anna nods and moves to stand.

Elsa's eyes narrow. "Is he coming in here?"

"Not if I hurry." Anna glances at her from the corner of her eye, expression shrewder than Elsa's ever seen it. "I know you don't like him."

"Does that bother you?"

Anna smirks. "I'm not sure I should answer that."

She turns to leave before Elsa can press for a real answer, and Elsa watches her go, watches her hips, watches her shoulders, watches her hair. Elsa watches until Anna has opened the door and slipped out into the night.

/-/-/-/-/


End file.
